extended roughly from Bouverie Street to
Ashen-tree Court, and lay just north of George Yard.

[Footnote 524: The stipple walls, in the original survey colored gray,
were of stone; the thinner walls of the adjoining "tenements," in the
original colored red, were of brick.]

[Illustration: A PLAN OF WHITEFRIARS

A portion of an early seventeenth-century survey of the Whitefriars
property. The playhouse adjoined the "Scullere" on the south. (This
survey was discovered in the Print Room of the British Museum by Mr.
A.W. Clapham, and reproduced in _The Journal of the British
Archaeological Association_, 1910.)]

Of the career of the Children under the joint management of Drayton
and Woodford we know almost nothing. But in March, 1608, a new
management assumed charge of the troupe, and from this point on the
history of the playhouse is reasonably clear.

The original lease of the building, it seems, expired on March 5,
1608. But before the expiration--in the latter part of 1607 or in the
early part of 1608--Drayton and Woodford secured a new lease on the
property for six years, eight months, and twenty days, or until
December 25 (one of the four regular feasts of the year), 1614. In
February, 1608, after having secured this renewal of the lease, Thomas
Woodford suddenly determined to retire from the enterprise; and he
sold his moiety to one David Lording Barry,[525] author of the play
_Ram Alley_. Barry and Drayton at once made plans to divide the
property into six shares, so as to distribute the expenses and the
risks as well as the hoped-for profits. Barry induced his friend,
George Androwes, to purchase one share, and hence the lawsuit from
which we derive most of our knowledge of the playhouse. From this suit
I quote below the more significant part relating to the new
organization:

Humbly complaining, sheweth unto your honorable lordship,
your daily orator, George Androwes, of London, silkweaver,
that whereas one Lordinge Barry, about February which was in
the year of our Lord 1607 [i.e., 1608], pretending himself
to be lawfully possessed of one moiety of a messuage or
mansion house, parcel of the late dissolved monastery called
the Whitefriars, in Fleet Street, in the suburbs of London,
by and under a lease made thereof, about March then next
following, from the right honorable Robert, Lord Buckhurst,
unto one Michael Drayton and Thomas Woodford, for the term