the 'Fortune' playhouse from the ground: a large round brick building. . . .
Lovewit. What kind of Playhouses had they before the Wars?
Truman. The 'Blackfriars', 'Cockpit', and 'Salisbury Court' were called Private Houses; and were very small to what we see now. The 'Cockpit' was standing since the Restoration; and Rhodes's Company acted there for some time.
Lovewit. I have seen that.
Truman. Then you have seen the other two, in effect; for they were all three built almost exactly alike, for form and bigness. Here they had 'Pits' for the gentry, and acted by candlelight.
The 'Globe', 'Fortune', and 'Bull' were large houses, and lay partly open to the weather: and there they always acted by day-*light. . . .
Truman. Plays were frequently acted by Choristers and Singing Boys; and several of our old Comedies have printed in the title-page, Acted by the Children of Paul's (not the School, but the Church); others, By the Children of Her Majesty's Chapel. In particular, Cynthia's Revels and the Poetaster were played by them; who were, at that time, famous for good action. . . . Some of the Chapel Boys, when they grew men, became Actors at the 'Blackfriars'. Such were Nathan Field and John Underwood.
iii.
[Extracts from John Downes, Roscius Anglicanus, or, an Historical
Review of the Stage (1708), reprinted by Joseph Knight (1886). An earlier
reprint is in F. G. Waldron, Literary Museum (1792). Downes became
prompter to the Duke of York's men under Sir William Davenant at
Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1662.]
In the Reign of King Charles the First, there were Six Play Houses
allow'd in Town: The Black-Fryars Company, His Majesty's Servants;
The Bull in St. John's-street; another in Salisbury Court; another
call'd the Fortune; another at the Globe; and the Sixth at the Cock-Pit
in Drury-Lane; all which continu'd Acting till the beginning of
the said Civil Wars. The scattered Remnant of several of these
Houses, upon King Charles's Restoration, Fram'd a Company who
Acted again at the Bull, and Built them a New House in Gibbon's
Tennis Court in Clare-Market; in which Two Places they continu'd
Acting all 1660, 1661, 1662 and part of 1663. In this time they
Built them a New Theatre in Drury Lane. . . .
Sir William [Davenant] in order to prepare Plays to Open his Theatre, it being then a Building in Lincoln's-Inn Fields, His Company Rehearsed the First and Second Part of the Siege of Rhodes; and the Wits at Pothecaries-Hall: And in Spring 1662, Open'd his House with the said Plays, having new Scenes and Decorations, being the first that e're were Introduc'd in England.
