, who continued to be the mainstays of the company. There was
also the clown, Augustine Phillips, an excellent comic actor of the old
school. These four became the most intimate friends of Shakespeare, and
to Condell and Heminge posterity owes special gratitude, since it was
they who, after the death of Shakespeare, undertook the publication of
the first printed collection of his plays.

It is impossible to decide definitely which of Shakespeare's plays
belonged to the repertoire of The Theatre. It is probable that his first
plays, _Love's Labor Lost, The Comedy of Errors, The Two Gentlemen of
Verona_, and his first tragedy, _Romeo and Juliet_, saw the light on
this stage between 1589 and 1591. Afterward, between 1594 and 1597,
these were possibly increased by _A Midsummer Night's Dream, Richard the
Second, King John, The Merchant of Venice_, and _Henry IV_.

The repertoire of The Theatre also included the so-called "jigs," merry
after-plays, mostly consisting of songs and dances, with frequent
allusions to the events of the day, sneering at the Puritans, the
magistrates, and other enemies of the playhouses.

It has been briefly mentioned above that not long after the
establishment of The Theatre--at the latest in the following year--this
playhouse gained a companion in The Curtain, which thus became the
second of its kind in London.

The two playhouses were very close to each other, but for this very
reason it seems natural to suppose that they were rather meant to
support than to rival each other. They were like a kind of
double-barrelled gun directed against the corporation, and they seem,
indeed, to an equal extent, to have roused the anger of the Puritans,
for they are generally mentioned together in the Puritan pamphlets
directed against playhouses and all other wickedness.

However, the history of The Curtain is almost unknown to us. While we
know a good deal about the outward circumstances of The Theatre on
account of the constant troubles which the Burbage family had to endure
from the proprietor of the ground and the municipal authorities, and of
the subsequent lawsuit, the reports we find about The Curtain are
extremely meagre. We know neither when nor by whom it was built nor when
it was pulled down.

By a mistake which is natural enough, its name has been connected with
the front curtain of the stage. We shall see later that no such curtain
existed in the time of Shakespeare, and we do not know that t