of the paper, or other stuff, wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the thatch, where being thought at first but an idle smoke, and their eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly, and ran round like a train, consuming within less than an hour the whole house to the very grounds. This was the fatal period of that virtuous fabric, wherein yet nothing did perish but wood and straw, and a few forsaken cloaks; only one man had his breeches set on fire, that would perhaps have broiled him, if he had not by the benefit of a provident wit put it out with bottle ale.'
On 8 July John Chamberlain wrote to Sir Ralph Winwood:[1]
'The burning of the Globe, or play-house, on the Bankside, on
St. Peter's day, cannot escape you; which fell out by a peal of
chambers (that I know not upon what occasion were to be used in the
play), the tamplin or stopple of one of them lighting in the thatch
that covered the house, burn'd it down to the ground in less than two
hours, with a dwelling-house adjoining, and it was a great marvaile
and fair grace of God, that the people had so little harm, having
but two narrow doors to get out.'
Nor was poetic chronicles of the disaster lacking. On the day
after the fire took place, two ballads about it were entered in
the Stationers' Register.[2] Neither is known in print, but the
use of the word 'doleful' suggests that one of them, of which
the author was William Parrat, is probably identical with
the following set of verses, preserved in manuscript:[3]
A Sonnett upon the pittiful burneing of the Globe playhowse in London.
Now sitt the downe, Melpomene,
Wrapt in a sea-cole robe,
And tell the dolefull tragedie,
That late was playd at Globe;
For noe man that can singe and saye
[But ?] was scard on St. Peters daye.
Oh sorrow, pittifull sorrow, and yett all this is true.
in The Gentleman's
Magazine (1816), lxxxvi. 114, 'from an old manuscript volume of poems and therefrom by Collier, i. 371, and Hazlitt, E. D. S. 225.]
- ↑ Winwood, iii. 469.
- ↑ Arber, iii. 528, 'Simon Stafford . . . a ballad called the sodayne Burninge of the Globe on the Bankside in the Play tyme on Saint Peters day last 1613'; 'Edward White . . . a doleful ballad of the general ouerthrowe of the famous theater on the Banksyde called the Globe &c by William Parrat'.
- ↑ Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, i. 310, 'from a manuscript of the early part of the seventeenth century, of unquestionable authenticity, preserved in the library of Sir Mathew Wilson, Bart., of Eshton Hall, co. York'. The Eshton Hall collection, originally formed by John Hopkinson in 1660, has recently been sold, with the verses, to Mr. G. D. Smith of New York. The 'Sonnett' was first printed [by Joseph Haslewood
