the actors, “during the queen’s pleasure, to use, exercise, and occupy the art and faculty of playing tragedies, comedies, interludes, and stage plays, as well for the recreation of the queen’s subjects as for her own solace and pleasure, within the city of London and its liberties, and within any cities, towns, and boroughs throughout England.”  This most important concession to the players was strenuously opposed by the Lord Mayor and Corporation, who maintained that “the playing of interludes and the resort to the same” were likely to provoke “the infection of the plague,” were “hurtfull in corruption of youth,” were “great wasting both of the time and thrift of many poor people,” and “great withdrawing of the people from publique prayer and from the service of God.”  At last they proposed, as a compromise, that the players of the queen, or of Lord Leicester—­for these titles seem to have been bestowed upon the actors indifferently—­should be permitted to perform within the city boundaries upon certain special conditions, to the effect that their names and number should be notified to the Lord Mayor and the Justices of Middlesex and Surrey, and that they should not divide themselves into several companies; that they should be content with playing in private houses, at weddings, &c., without public assemblies, or “if more be thought good to be tolerated,” that they should not play openly till the whole deaths in London had been for twenty days under fifty a week; that they should not play on the Sabbath or on holy days until after evening prayer; and that no playing should be in the dark, “nor continue any such time but as any of the auditoire may returne to their dwellings in London before sonne-set, or at least before it be dark.”  These severe restrictions so far defeated the objects of the civic powers, that they led in truth to the construction of three theatres beyond the Lord Mayor’s jurisdiction, but sufficiently near to its boundaries to occasion him grave disquietude.  About 1576 Burbadge built his theatre in the Liberty of the Blackfriars—­a precinct in which civic authority was at any rate disputed.  Within a year or so The Curtain and The Theatre, both in Shoreditch, were also opened to the public.  The Mayor and Corporation persistently endeavoured to assert authority over these establishments, but without much practical result.  It may be added that the Blackfriars Theatre was permanently closed in 1647, part of the ground on which it stood, adjoining Apothecaries’ Hall, still bearing the name of Playhouse Yard; that The Theatre in Shoreditch was abandoned about 1598 (it was probably a wooden erection, and in twenty years might have become untenantable); and that The Curtain fell into disuse at the beginning of the reign of Charles I.

The prices of admission to the theatres varied according to the estimation in which they were held, and were raised on special occasions.  “Twopenny rooms,” or galleries, were to be found at the larger and more popular theatres.  In Goffe’s “Careless Shepherdess,” 1656, acted at the Salisbury Court Theatre, appear the lines: