rs. The best companies were
frequently employed to act at court, and during the summer or when the
plague was raging in London, they often toured the country. The
children's companies flourished from time to time, and especially from
1599-1607 they were, as we learn from _Hamlet_, formidable rivals of the
men.

[Page Heading: Companies of Actors]

The history of the adult companies shows the growth of two distinct
interests, that of Henslowe and Alleyn, and that of the Burbages.
Henslowe, whose diary is one of the chief documents for the history of
the theater, built the Rose, and in partnership with his son-in-law, the
famous actor Alleyn, controlled the Fortune and the Hope, and the
companies known as the Admiral's and the Earl of Worcester's men, and
later on the Queen's and the Prince's men. The Burbages owned the
Theater, the Globe, and the Blackfriars, and were in control of
Shakespeare's company. This company, at first the Earl of Leicester's
men, was known by the names of its various patrons, Strange's, Derby's,
Hunsdon's, and the Lord Chamberlain's, until in 1603 it became the
King's men. For a short time, as Lord Strange's men, it acted at the
Rose, and apparently later at the playhouse in Newington Butts, but its
regular theaters were the Theater, the Globe, and Blackfriars. With this
company Shakespeare was connected from the beginning, and he aided in
making it the chief London company. For a time, Alleyn and the Admiral's
men were its close rivals, but even before the accession of James I,
Shakespeare and Burbage had given it a supremacy that it maintained to
the closing of the theaters.

There are various pictures of the exterior of Elizabethan theaters in
the contemporary maps or views of London, the best representation of the
four Bankside theaters being the engraving of Hollar printed in the
Tudor edition of _Twelfth Night_. This was first published in
_Londinopolis_, 1657, but represents the Bankside as it was about 1620.
Four pictures of interiors have been preserved, that from Kirkman's
_Drolls_, those from the title-pages of _Roxana_ and _Messalina_, and
the DeWitt drawing of the Swan, reproduced in the Tudor Shakespeare, _1
Henry VI_. The drawing from Kirkman's _Drolls_ is usually known as the
Red Bull stage, but it was not issued until 1679, and does not seem to
have anything to do with the Red Bull or with any other regular
theater. The _Messalina_ and _Roxana_ pictures are small, and both sh