he
background draperies of that period had the fixed name of "curtain."

Anyhow, the possibility of this derivation is absolutely excluded by the
fact that the spot on which the second London playhouse was built, for
some unknown reason, bore the name of "Curtayne Close." So the playhouse
was simply named after the spot on which it was built.

As long as The Theatre stood close beside it, the two companies shared
almost the same fate. We have seen that in 1597 an order was issued to
pull down both playhouses; this order, however, was never carried out.
But after the removal of The Theatre to Bankside, The Curtain seems to
have gone its own way. The actors, on the whole, were not afraid of
pleading their cause from the stage, and of retorting on the attacks of
their assailants by lashing them with the whip of caricature, and it
seems that those of The Curtain had gone a little too far in their
Aristophanic parodies of their worthy fellow-citizens and chief
magistrate; for in May, 1601, the justices of the peace for the county
of Middlesex received the following admonition from the privy council:
"We doo understand that certaine players that used to recyte their
playes at the Curtaine in Moorefeilds, do represent upon the stage in
their interludes the persons of some gent of good desert and quality
that are yet alive under obscure manner, but yet in such sorte that all
the hearers may take notice both of the matter and the persons that are
meant thereby. This beinge a thinge verye unfitte, offensive and
contrary, to such direction as have been heretofore taken, that no
plaies should be openly shewed but such as were first perused and
allowed, and that minister no occasion of offence or scandall, wee do
hereby require you that you do forthwith forbidd those players to
whomsoever they appertaine that do play at the Curtaine in Moorefeildes
to represent any such play, and that you will examine them who made that
play and to shew the same unto you, and as you in your discrecions shall
thincke the same unfitte to be publiquely shewed to forbidd them from
henceforth to play the same eyther privately or publiquely; and if upon
veiwe of the said play you shall finde the subject so odious and
inconvenient as is informed, wee require you to take bond of the
chiefest of them to aunswere their rashe and indiscreete dealing before
us."

We know nothing of the result of this prosecution, but we may be allowed
to assume that it did n