where, outside
the jurisdiction of the puritanical city fathers, they erected their
first regular playhouses.

The "banishment" referred to by Flecknoe was the Order of the Common
Council issued on December 6, 1574. This famous document described
public acting as then taking place "in great inns, having chambers and
secret places adjoining to their open stages and galleries"; and it
ordered that henceforth "no inn-keeper, tavern-keeper, nor other
person whatsoever within the liberties of this city shall openly
show, or play, nor cause or suffer to be openly showed or played
within the house yard or any other place within the liberties of this
city, any play," etc.

How many inns were let on special occasions for dramatic purposes we
cannot say; but there were five "great inns," more famous than the
rest, which were regularly used by the best London troupes. Thus
Howes, in his continuation of Stow's _Annals_ (p. 1004), in attempting
to give a list of the playhouses which had been erected "within London
and the suburbs," begins with the statement, "Five inns, or common
osteryes, turned to playhouses." These five were the Bell and the
Cross Keys, hard by each other in Gracechurch Street, the Bull, in
Bishopsgate Street, the Bell Savage, on Ludgate Hill, and the Boar's
Head, in Whitechapel Street without Aldgate.[2]

[Footnote 2: All historians of the drama have confused this great
carriers' inn with the Boar's Head in Eastcheap made famous by
Falstaff. The error seems to have come from the _Analytical Index of
the Remembrancia_, which (p. 355) incorrectly catalogues the letter of
March 31, 1602, as referring to the "Boar's Head in Eastcheap." The
letter itself, however, when examined, gives no indication whatever of
Eastcheap, and other evidence shows conclusively that the inn was
situated in Whitechapel just outside of Aldgate.]

Although Flecknoe referred to the Order of the Common Council as a
"banishment," it did not actually drive the players from the city.
They were able, through the intervention of the Privy Council, and on
the old excuse of rehearsing plays for the Queen's entertainment, to
occupy the inns for a large part of each year.[3] John Stockwood, in a
sermon preached at Paul's Cross, August 24, 1578, bitterly complains
of the "eight ordinary places" used regularly for plays, referring, it
seems, to the five inns and the three playhouses--the Theatre,
Curtain, and Blackfriars--recently opened to the pu