f people through the fields that
I knew the play was done."[107]

[Footnote 106: The site is probably marked by Curtain Court in
Chasserau's survey of 1745, reproduced on page 79.]

[Footnote 107: Ed. by J.O. Halliwell, for The Shakespeare Society
(1844), p. 105.]

The new playhouse derived its name from the Curtain estate, on which
it was erected.[108] This estate was formerly the property of the
Priory of Holywell, and was described in 1538 as "scituata et
existentia extra portas ejusdem nuper monasterii prope pasturam dicte
nuper Priorisse, vocatam _the Curteine_."[109] Why it was so called
is not clear. The name may have been derived from some previous owner
of the property; it may, as Collier thought, have come from some early
association with the walls (_curtains_) or defenses of the city; or,
it may have come, as Tomlins suggests, from the mediaeval Latin
_cortina_, meaning a court, a close, a farm enclosure.[110] Whatever
its origin--the last explanation seems the most plausible--the
interesting point is that it had no connection whatever with a stage
curtain.

[Footnote 108: The Rose and the Red Bull derived their names in a
similar way from the estates on which they were erected.]

[Footnote 109: Halliwell-Phillipps, _Outlines_, I, 364.]

[Footnote 110: Tomlins, _Origin of the Curtain Theatre, and Mistakes
Regarding It_, in The Shakespeare Society's Papers (1844), p. 29.]

The building was probably opened to the London public in the summer or
autumn of 1577. The first reference to it is found in T[homas]
W[hite]'s _Sermon Preached at Pawles Crosse on Sunday the Thirde of
November, 1577_: "Behold the sumptuous theatre houses, a continual
monument of London's prodigality and folly";[111] and a reference to
it by name appears in Northbrooke's _A Treatise_, licensed December,
1577: "Those places, also, which are made up and builded for such
plays and interludes, as the Theatre and Curtain."[112]

[Footnote 111: J.D. Wilson, _The Cambridge History of English
Literature_, VI, 435, says that this sermon was "delivered at Paul's
cross on 9 December, 1576 and, apparently, repeated on 3 November in
the following year." This is incorrect; White did preach a sermon at
Paul's Cross on December 9, but not the sermon from which this
quotation is drawn.]

[Footnote 112: Ed. by J.P. Collier, for The Shakespeare Society
(1843), p. 85.]

Like the Theatre, the Curtain was a peculiarly shaped building,
specially desi