l Company moved to the Fortune, and Prince
Charles's Men occupied the Red Bull.

Five years later, at Easter, 1640, Prince Charles's Men moved back to
the Fortune, and the Red Bull Company returned to its old home. In a
prologue written to celebrate the event,[508] the members of the
company declared:

Here, gentlemen, our anchor's fix't.

[Footnote 508: J. Tatham, _Fancies Theatre_. For a fuller discussion
of the shifting of companies in 1635 and 1640 see the chapter on "The
Fortune."]

This proved true, for the company remained at the Red Bull until
Parliament passed the ordinance of 1642 closing the playhouses and
forbidding all dramatic performances. The ordinance, which was to hold
good during the continuance of the civil war, was renewed in 1647,
with January 1, 1648, set as the date of its expiration. Through some
oversight a new ordinance was not immediately passed, and the actors
were prompt to take advantage of the fact. They threw open the
playhouses, and the Londoners flocked in great crowds to hear plays
again. At the Red Bull, so we learn from the newspaper called _Perfect
Occurrences_, was given a performance of Beaumont and Fletcher's _Wit
Without Money_.

But on February 9, 1648, Parliament made up for its oversight by
passing an exceptionally severe ordinance against dramatic
exhibitions, directing that actors be publicly flogged, and that each
spectator be fined the sum of five shillings.

During the dark years that followed, the Red Bull, in spite of this
ordinance, was occasionally used by venturous actors. James Wright, in
his _Historia Histrionica_, tells us that upon the outbreak of the war
the various London actors had gone "into the King's army, and, like
good men and true, served their old master, though in a different, yet
more honourable capacity. Robinson was killed at the taking of a place
(I think Basing House) by Harrison.... Mohun was a captain.... Hart
was cornet of the same troop, and Shatterel quartermaster. Allen, of
the Cockpit, was a major.... The rest either lost or exposed their
lives for their king."[509] He concludes the narrative by saying that
when the wars were over, those actors who were left alive gathered to
London, "and for a subsistence endeavoured to revive their old trade
privately." They organized themselves into a company in 1648 and
attempted "to act some plays with as much caution and privacy as could
be at the Cockpit"; but after three or four days