mers, but also then and there
pulling, breaking, and throwing downe the sayd Theatre in verye
outragious, violent, and riotous sort, to the great disturbance and
terrefyeing not onlye of your subjectes sayd servauntes and farmers, but
of divers others of your Majesties loving subjectes there neere
inhabitinge; and having so done, did then alsoe in most forcible and
ryotous manner take and carrye away from thence all the wood and timber
thereof, unto the Bancksyde in the parishe of St. Marye Overyes, and
there erected a newe playehouse with the sayd timber and wood."

Such was the end of the first short-lived London playhouse. But the new
house, which was built out of its materials on the "Bankside," was the
celebrated "Globe," the name of which is inseparably connected with that
of Shakespeare.

As we said above, James Burbage, the creator of The Theatre, belonged to
the company which played under the patronage of Lord Leicester, and
therefore went under the name of "Lord Leicester's Servants" or "Men."
The four other actors, who in 1574 received a royal license to act from
Queen Elizabeth, were John Perkin, John Lanham, William Jonson, and
Robert Wilson.

While James Burbage was no doubt the leader of the company, Robert
Wilson is supposed to have been its chief actor, at all events of comic
parts, and he was the only one among the five who was also a dramatic
author. Under his name, but after his death, Cuthbert Burbage published,
in 1594, _The Prophecy of the Cobbler_; and among anonymous plays the
following are ascribed to him: _Fair Eve, The Miller's Daughter from
Manchester, The Three Ladies of London_, etc.

Most likely some of Wilson's plays were acted in The Theatre. With this
exception the internal history of this playhouse is rather obscure, and
very little is known of its _repertoire_. A few titles may be found in
contemporary literature, such as _The Blacksmith's Daughter_, mentioned
by the Puritan Gosson in his _School of Abuse_, as "containing the
treachery of Turks, the honorable bounty of a noble mind, the shining of
virtue in distress," _The Conspiracy of Catilina, Caesar and Pompey_, and
_The Play about the Fabians_.

All these must have belonged to the earliest repertoire of The Theatre,
for Gosson's _School of Abuse_ appeared in 1579.

It is of more interest that Thomas Lodge mentions the original
pre-Shakespearean _Hamlet_ as having been acted in The Theatre. He
speaks of one who "looks as p