e premises in question; and sayeth that it is at least
three years since [i.e., in 1597] he, this deponent, first heard the
plaintiff labor and entreat the defendant for a new lease."[82]
Cuthbert tells us that Alleyn did not positively refuse to renew the
lease, "but for some causes, which he feigned, did defer the same from
time to time, but yet gave hope to your subject, and affirmed that he
would make him such a lease."[83]

[Footnote 82: Wallace, _op. cit._, p. 246.]

[Footnote 83: _Ibid._, p. 184.]

Cuthbert's anxiety in this matter is explained by the fact that the
old lease gave him the right to tear down the Theatre and carry away
the timber and other materials to his own use, provided he did so
before the expiration of the twenty-one years. Yet, relying on
Alleyn's promises to renew the lease, he "did forbear to pull downe
and carry away the timber and stuff employed for the said Theatre and
playing-house at the end of the said first term of one and twenty
years." A failure to renew the lease would mean, of course, the loss
of the building.

Alleyn, though deferring to sign a new lease, allowed Burbage to
continue in possession of the property at "the old rent of L14." Yet
the Theatre seems not to have been used for plays after the original
lease expired.[84] The Lord Chamberlain's Company, which had been
occupying the Theatre, and of which Richard Burbage was the chief
actor, had moved to the Curtain; and the author of _Skialetheia_,
printed in 1598, refers to the old playhouse as empty: "But see,
yonder, one, like the unfrequented Theatre, walks in dark silence and
vast solitude."[85]

[Footnote 84: The lease expired on April 13, 1597; on July 28 the
Privy Council closed all playhouses until November. The references to
the Theatre in _The Remembrancia_ (see The Malone Society's
_Collections_, I, 78) do not necessarily imply that the building was
then actually used by the players.]

[Footnote 85: The same fact is revealed in the author's remark, "If my
dispose persuade me to a play, I'le to the Rose or Curtain," for at
this time only the Chamberlain's Men and the Admiral's Men were
allowed to play.]

To Cuthbert Burbage such a state of affairs was intolerable, and on
September 29, 1598, he made a new appeal to Alleyn. Alleyn proffered a
lease already drawn up, but Cuthbert would not "accept thereof"
because of the "very unreasonable covenants therein contained."[86]

[Footnote 86: Wallace, _op. cit