f Requests,
1600, Wallace, _op. cit._, p. 182. I have stripped the passage of some
of its legal verbiage.]

Fourthly, it was agreed that at any time before the expiration of the
lease, Burbage might take down and carry away to his own use any
building that in the mean time he might have erected on the vacant
ground for the purpose of a playhouse:

And farther, the said Gyles Alleyn and Sara his wife did
covenant and grant to the said James Burbage that it should
and might be lawful to the said James Burbage (in
consideration of the imploying and bestowing the foresaid
two hundred pounds in forme aforesaid) at any time or times
before the end of the said term of one and twenty years, to
have, take down, and carry away to his own proper use for
ever all such buildings and other things as should be
builded, erected, or set up in or upon the gardens and void
grounds by the said James, either for a theatre or playing
place, or for any other lawful use, without any stop, claim,
let, trouble, or interruption of the said Gyles Alleyn and
Sara his wife.[43]

[Footnote 43: Quoted from Burbage _v._ Alleyn, Court of Requests,
1600, Wallace, _op. cit._, p. 182.]

Protected by these specific terms, Burbage proceeded to the erection
of his playhouse. He must have had faith and abundant courage, for he
was a poor man, quite unequal to the large expenditures called for by
his plans. A person who had known him for many years, deposed in 1592
that "James Burbage was not at the time of the first beginning of the
building of the premises worth above one hundred marks[44] in all his
substance, for he and this deponent were familiarly acquainted long
before that time and ever since."[45] We are not surprised to learn,
therefore, that he was "constrained to borrow diverse sums of money,"
and that he actually pawned the lease itself to a money-lender.[46]
Even so, without assistance, we are told, he "should never be able to
build it, for it would cost five times as much as he was worth."

[Footnote 44: That is, about L80.]

[Footnote 45: Wallace, _op. cit._, p. 134; cf. p. 153.]

[Footnote 46: Wallace, _op. cit._, p. 151. Cuthbert Burbage declared
in 1635: "The Theatre he built with many hundred pounds taken up at
interest." (Halliwell-Phillipps, _Outlines_, I, 317.)]

Fortunately he had a wealthy brother-in-law, John Brayne,[47] a London
grocer, described as "worth fiv