the Cockpit.

[Footnote 586: Wallace, _ibid._, pp. 32, 46. John Smith was delivering
silk and other clothes to the Queen Anne's Men at the Red Bull from
1612 until February 23, 1617.]

On the latter date, during the performance of a play, the Cockpit was
entered by a mob of disorderly persons, who proceeded to demolish the
interior. The occasion for the wrecking of the new playhouse was the
Shrove Tuesday saturnalia of the London apprentices, who from time
immemorial had employed this holiday to pull down houses of ill-fame
in the suburbs. That the Cockpit was situated in the neighborhood of
such houses cannot be doubted. We may suppose that the mob, fresh from
sacking buildings, had crowded into the playhouse in the afternoon,
and before the play was over had wrecked that building too.

The event created a great stir at the time. William Camden, in his
_Annals_, wrote under the date of March 4, 1617:

Theatrum ludiorum, nuper erectum in Drury Lane, a furente
multitudine diruitur, et apparatus dilaceratur.

Howes, in his continuation of Stow's _Annals_, writes:

Shrove-Tuesday, the fourth of March, many disordered persons
of sundry kinds, amongst whom were very many young boys and
lads, that assembled themselves in Lincolnes Inn Field,
Finsbury Field, in Ratcliffe, and Stepney Field, where in
riotous manner they did beat down the walls and windows of
many victualing houses and of all other houses which they
suspected to be bawdy houses. And that afternoon they
spoiled a new playhouse, and did likewise more hurt in
diverse other places.[587]

[Footnote 587: _Annals_ (1631), p. 1026.]

That several persons were killed, and many injured, is disclosed by a
letter from the Privy Council to the Lord Mayor, dated March 5, 1617:

It is not unknown unto you what tumultuous outrages were
yesterday committed near unto the city of London in diverse
places by a rowt of lewd and loose persons, apprentices and
others, especially in Lincolns Inn Fields and Drury Lane,
where in attempting to pull down a playhouse belonging to
the Queen's Majesty's Servants, there were diverse persons
slain, and others hurt and wounded, the multitude there
assembled being to the number of many thousands, as we are
credibly informed.[588]

[Footnote 588: The Malone Society's _Collections_, I, 374. Collier, in
_The History of English Dramatic P