at Court, had been in their own quarters 'at Paules', although the notice of 1578, as well as Gosson's reference, suggests that the public were not altogether excluded from their rehearsals. Probably they used their singing school, which may have been still, as in the twelfth century, the church of St. Gregory itself.[1] This privacy, even if something of a convention, had perhaps enabled them to utilize the services of the grammar school when they had occasion to make a display of erudition.[2] After Westcott's death, however, they appear to have followed the example of the Chapel, who had already
- [Footnote: Robert Knight, Nicholas Carleton, Baylye, Nasion, and Gregory Bowringe,
to 'Shepard that keepeth the door at playes', and to Pole 'the keper of the gate'. Wallace, i. 171, cites the will from P. C. C. 14 and 31, Tirwhite, giving the date of confirmation as 3 July 1582. One name may be added to Westcott's list of boys from a Court Minute of Christ's Hospital on 5 March 1580 (Musical Times, 1 Jan. 1907), 'M^r. Sebastian, of Paulls, is appointed to have Hallawaie the younger out of this House to be one of the singing children of the Cathedral Church of Paulls in this Citie'.]Lillie and understood the Latin tongue perfectly; and because he had a sweet voice he was put to learn prick-song among the choristers of St. Paul's, for that learned Mr. Lillie knew full well that knowledge in music was a help and a furtherance to all arts'. On the other hand, Dean Nowell (Churton, Life of A. Nowell, 190) instructed Thomas Giles in 1584 to teach the choristers catechism, writing, and music, and then to 'suffer them to resort to Paul's School that they may learn the principles of Grammar'. Some seventeenth-century performances by the grammar school, after the regular Paul's plays ceased, are upon record.]
- ↑ Gosson (1582) speaks of the plays as 'at Paules'; and Rawlidge (1628) mentions a house 'nigh Pauls' as one of those pulled down by the City, apparently in 1596 (cf. ch. xvi). The Paul's boys, however, can hardly have been playing for some years before that date. Howes (1629) definitely specifies the singing school (cf. ch. xvi). On the other hand, Flecknoe, a late authority and in a passage dealing (inaccurately) with Jacobean rather than Elizabethan conditions, assigns the plays to 'behinde the Convocation-house in Paul's' (App. I). This is expanded by Malone (Variorum, iii. 46) into 'in S^t. Paul's school-room, behind the Convocation-house', and Baker, 45, suggests that they used a small yard or cloister before the doors of the Convocation House and shut off by a high wall from the main churchyard (cf. Hollar's prints in Baker, 95, 115). But I doubt if Flecknoe had anything in mind except St. Gregory's, which stood just west of the Convocation House. The hall of the College of Minor Canons is perhaps also a possibility; but neither this nor the church is likely to have afforded a circular auditorium (cf. ch. xviii). Can they have used the Convocation House itself?
- ↑ McDonnell, 27, argues for the participation of the grammar school in the plays. Obviously the phrase 'children of Paul's', ordinarily used of the playing-boys, proves nothing one way or the other. That the plays were mainly an affair of the choir is a fair inference from the fact that they were presented at Court by the song-school masters. But there is no reason to doubt that the mediaeval give and take between the two schools continued through the sixteenth century. Hunter, Chorus Vatum, v. 542, quotes a manuscript life of Sir Thomas Offley, 'This Thomas Offley became a good grammarian under Mr. [William
