o be known as "The
Children of His Majesty's Revels."[521] Obviously his hope was to make
the Children of His Majesty's Revels at Whitefriars rival the
successful Children of Her Majesty's Revels at Blackfriars. In this
ambitious enterprise he associated with himself a wealthy London
merchant, Thomas Woodford, whom we know as having been interested in
various theatrical investments.[522] These two men leased from Lord
Buckhurst for a short period of time a building described as a
"mansion house" formerly a part of the Whitefriars monastery: "the
rooms of which are thirteen in number, three below, and ten above;
that is to say, the great hall, the kitchen by the yard, and a cellar,
with all the rooms from the Master of the Revells' office as the same
are now severed and divided."[523] The "great hall" here mentioned,
once the refectory of the monks, was made into the playhouse. Its
"great" size may be inferred from the fact that there were ten rooms
"above"; and its general excellence may be inferred from the fact that
it was leased at L50 per annum, whereas Blackfriars, in a more
desirable location and fully equipped as a theatre, was rented for
only L40.

[Footnote 521: Fleay, Murray, and others are wrong in assuming that
this troupe was merely a continuation of the Paul's Boys. So far as I
can discover, there is no official record of the patent issued to
Drayton; but that such a patent was issued is clear from the lawsuits
of 1609, printed by Greenstreet in _The New Shakspere Society's
Transactions_ (1887-90), p. 269.]

[Footnote 522: He was part proprietor of the Red Bull. In the case of
Witter _v._ Heminges and Condell he was examined as a witness (see
Wallace, _Shakespeare and his London Associates_, p. 74), but what
connection, if any, he had with the Globe does not appear.]

[Footnote 523: Greenstreet, _The New Shakspere Society's Transactions_
(1887-90), p. 275.]

From an early seventeenth-century survey of the Whitefriars property
(see the opposite page), we are able to place the building very
exactly. The part of the monastery used as a playhouse--the
Frater--was the southern cloister, marked in the plan, "My Lords
Cloyster." The "kitchen by the yard" mentioned in the document just
quoted is clearly represented in the survey by the "Scullere." The
size of the playhouse is hard to ascertain, but it was approximately
thirty-five feet in width and eighty-five feet in length.[524] In the
London of to-day it