ar Recognizances, taken on the same day, before the
same J.P., of the same William Wintershall and Henry Eaton,
gentlemen, in the same sum of fifty pounds each; for the
appearance of Edward Shatterall at the next. Q.S.P. for
Middlesex at Hicks Hall, "to answer for the unlawful
maintaining of stage-plays and interludes at the Red Bull in
St. John's Street &c." S.P.R., 17, May, 1659.

[Footnote 516: Cf. Wright, _Historia Histrionica_, p. 412; and for the
general history of the actors at the Red Bull during this period see
the Herbert records in Halliwell-Phillipps, _A Collection of Ancient
Documents_.]

Later, it seems, they secured a license from the authorities, and
thenceforth acted without interruption. Samuel Pepys made plans "to go
to the Red Bull Playhouse" with Mrs. Pierce and her husband on August
3, 1660, but was prevented by business. An account of his visit there
on March 23, 1661, is thus given in his _Diary_:

All the morning at home putting papers in order; dined at
home, and then out to the Red Bull (where I had not been
since plays came up again), but coming too soon I went out
again and walked up and down the Charterhouse Yard and
Aldersgate Street. At last came back again and went in,
where I was led by a seaman that knew me, but is here as a
servant, up to the tiring-room, where strange the confusion
and disorder that there is among them in fitting themselves,
especially here, where the clothes are very poor and the
actors but common fellows. At last into the pit, where I
think there was not above ten more than myself, and not one
hundred in the whole house. And the play, which is called
_All's Lost by Lust_, poorly done; and with so much
disorder, among others, that in the musique-room, the boy
that was to sing a song not singing it right, his master
fell about his ears and beat him so, that it put the whole
house in an uproar.

The actors, however, did not remain long at the Red Bull. They built
for themselves a new theatre in Drury Lane, whither they moved on
April 8, 1663;[517] and after this the old playhouse was deserted. In
Davenant's _The Play-House to Be Let_ (1663), I, i, we read:

Tell 'em the Red Bull stands empty for fencers:[518]
There are no tenants in it but old spiders.

[Footnote 517: After November 8, 1660, they acted also in Gibbon's
Tennis Court in C