Christopher Beeston and the Cockpit-Phoenix in Documents Eva Griffith

Shakespeare Bulletin, Volume 37, Number 1, Spring 2019, pp. 1-23 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/shb.2019.0000

For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/725934

[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ] Christopher Beeston and the Cockpit-Phoenix in Documents

Eva Griffith Independent Scholar

A week or so into September 1616, John Shepperd of Lyllypott Lane in the City of London, bricklayer, was digging to the west of the City. We know he was digging because he was arrested for doing so. On 10 September he was seen before Middlesex justices concerning this:

John Shepperd de Lyllypott lane London Brickleyer Comitted for workinge upon a new foundacion in Drury lane . . . 1

Shepperd was digging the foundations of a new playhouse; this playhouse, “The Cockpit,” later called “The Phoenix,” is the subject of this journal issue.2 It was the first theater built in Drury Lane; the first theater, therefore, in what is today termed London’s “West End.”3 If only we knew the shape and situation of the trench Shepperd was digging, for this has been a matter of debate for theater historians. At moments in the Cockpit-Phoenix’s history, it has been thought that the building was curved, mainly because it was associated with a cock-fighting arena, traditionally round in feel. But if it was curved, why was it so and in what way was this curvature expressed while Shepperd was digging? It is possible he was digging something round to adjoin a quadrilateral building, perhaps to invoke the traditional idea of a cockpit. Perhaps he was digging a quadrilateral trench to adjoin an already curved building. A further possibility is that no part of it was ever curved at all. It could have adjoined other buildings or even have been a completely independent structure, of indeterminate size and shape. This digging took place less than five months after William Shake- speare died in Stratford-upon-Avon. The man who laid out the money for this playhouse was an actor, like Shakespeare, who had worked with

Shakespeare in an early London-area company while it occupied the Cur- tain playhouse in Shoreditch in the late 1590s. This was before it moved to the Bankside Globe. The actor’s name was Christopher Beeston, also known as Christopher Hutchinson. His second wife, Elizabeth, took over the running of the Cockpit-Phoenix after Christopher’s death in 1638; his son William (from a previous marriage) took over the running of the playhouse’s companies at that time (Bentley 363–74; Honigmann and Brock 191–94). Known as “The Cockpit” because it was built on a piece of land des- ignated for fighting cocks, this theater became a playhouse which, once up and running, saw many significant productions from the mid-sixteen- teens onwards. Later, when playwrights and actors looked for somewhere to restore public playgoing after the English Civil War, the home of Restoration theater was not to be Bankside by London’s River Thames, not the City’s liberties, but the area in which Beeston’s playhouse was built: Drury Lane. London’s Theatreland extended its tendrils from there. The beginnings of The Cockpit can be discerned in the documents associated with its creation and with the man who as an 18-year-old was associated with Shakespeare’s company and who, in his thirties, was made to come before those in power to answer for his theater’s inception. For Shepperd the bricklayer was only allowed bail on condition that he “appeare before LLs [Lords] of the Connsel [Council] at theire first sitting at Whitehall & in the meane tyme not to goe on in the buildinge” and that he “doe his best endeavoure to bring forth Mr Beeston to morrow in Court . . . and Beesten to be bonnd [bound].”4 The theater-interrupted side of the story did not stop with Beeston’s call to Whitehall or the efforts after this in terms of stopping this playhouse being built. Other people even made the Cockpit a target for physical attack, and the symposium from which this issue emerges marked the four hundredth anniversary since this physical broaching occurred.5 One reason why the Cockpit is important to early modern scholarship about theaters and theater history is because despite being neglected as a topic because of its non-Shakespeare playhouse status, it has, in the recent past, become a focus for reconstruction issues. The modern Shakespeare’s Globe, lacking a plan of the Blackfriars playhouse, decided to employ designs for another indoor theatre of the time. These were those argued as penned for Beeston’s Cockpit, and it was these which eventually became the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.6 This is one story which will be alluded to here as we envision the first theatre in Drury Lane. As with so much we study, we will find that context is everything. christopher beeston and the cockpit-phoenix in documents 3

The Cockpit, Drury Lane: cockhouses and sheds

In 1647, the land on which the Cockpit was built before Shepperd worked there was described as including “about seauen or eight seueral messuages or dwelling howses with necessary out howses and other appurtenances” including “one messuage howse or tenement called a Cockpitt and after wardes used for a playhowse & now called the Phenix” along with “divers buildinges thereto belonging And one other messuage howse or tenement with the appurtenances adioyneing to the said Mes- suage called the Phenix.”7 These original buildings on this land were erected in 1609, by a man called John Best, who subleased the property to Beeston “alias Hutchinson” in 1616. It sounds here as if one building, with another joining on to it, was converted into a theater which had yet other buildings around it associated with it. In another document from the same suit to the last quoted, however, we are more clearly informed that a whole group of people contracted with Beeston under his alias name of Hutchinson. The “cockpit” element also becomes plural here, making the building issue more about what was developed on the whole land, not just one building. This property transaction consisted of:

All that edifices or building called the Cockpitts and the Cockhouses and shedds thereunto adioyning late before that tyme in the tenure or occupacion of John Atkins gent or his assignes Togeather alsoe with one tenement or house and a little Garden thereunto belonging next adioyning to the said Cockpitts then in the occupacion of Jonas Westwood or his assignes and one part or parcel of ground behind the said Cockpitts Cockhouses shedds Tenement and garden deuided.8

It is unclear whether the Cockpit theater was converted from one cockpit building, was a new building constructed on this land, or (to avoid coming into conflict with certain building regulations) was built tojoin onto a building or buildings already in place. The archives that tell us about early modern playhouses and theater companies in general, and the Cockpit in particular, are records from when things went wrong. The Hussey v. Rolleston, Kirkes case of the 1640s, concerning disputes from debt claimants quoted above, residing in the National Archives, and the John Shepperd arrest, in the London Metropolitan Archives, are two such examples. Perhaps it was Lincoln’s Inn lawyers who prompted the arrest of Mr. Shepperd the bricklayer. Lincoln’s Inn was not far away from his digging site, and the sessions records include the following note: 4 eva griffith christopher beeston and the cockpit-phoenix in documents

Whereas this Courte is informed that there is a new buildinge in hand to be set up and erected in Drury Lane nere Lincolnes Inne Fields att and adjoininge to the Cocke-pitt Contrary to the law & his Majesties proclamacions. 9

The advice in the records is that the building work should “priuatly be staid” with the workmen committed to prison. There was wisdom behind a private handling, as may become clear later. Shepperd was originally arrested because he was digging new foundations. The informer’s note, possibly received by the justices before the arrest and written into the books afterwards, referred to something “adjoining” the “Cocke-pitt” already in place. The proclamations to which the record alludes had been delivered in an ongoing way for some time, with a 1605 Jacobean version handed out on 1 March. Here the argument referring to the “City of London, or the Suburbs thereof, or within one mile of the same Suburbs” was that timber should be saved for shipping, and that new building work should only take place using brick or stone (Larkin and Hughes 111–12). Any persistent “offenders or workmen” acting outside the new rules were to be “bound to appeare in the said Court of Starchamber at the next sitting day of the same Court” to be “proceeded against” as “contemners of his Majesties expresse commande- ment” (Larkin and Hughes 112). There were addenda to these harsh rulings as the years rolled on, however, with a following proclamation of 1607 likely to have had a bearing on what arresting authorities, informers, and justices saw hap- pening in Drury Lane in 1616. Here the intention was to bring former City and Suburbs building proclamations together, with the overriding argument now being about the health hazards of over-crowding. Of the “plaine and distinct Articles” digested into the one proclamation, the first article began familiarly: there were to be no more buildings “erected, or attempted to be erected”:

except it be upon the foundation of a former dwelling house, or in or upon some inner court or yard of the same house. (Larkin & Hughes 171–75)

This part of the edict, allowing only foundations of a “former dwelling house” to be developed is, perhaps, the most important for theater historians to take in when considering the way in which early Stuart theatrical venues were described as time went on. There are four other proclamations concerning building between 1607 and 1616 recorded in Larkin and Hughes’s books of proclamations: one in1608 (193–95), two christopher beeston and the cockpit-phoenix in documents 5 in 1611 (267–71) and one in 1615 (345–47). Intriguingly, the latter one, made just prior to the Cockpit’s erection, specifically allowed “private houses” which one assumes relates to this former “dwelling house.” The more textually-conscious will recognize the term “private house” from drama-text title pages locating where a play was first performed by a company: “at the private house in the Blackfriars” meaning the King’s Men’s indoor playhouse, “the private house in Salisbury Court” meaning the Salisbury Court playhouse, and, in line with the theater studied here, “the private house in Drury Lane” meaning the “Cockpit” or, as it was later known, the “Phoenix.”10 This attachment, or relationship to a “former dwelling house” or current “private house,” may have been more important to seventeenth-century theater associates in the context of building regulations than we have promoted hitherto. Going on with the 1607 proclamation, anything that was partly erected contrary to the rules already stated must be pulled down; however, any building put up in the last five years should not be pulled down but rather checked for tenants and, if tenantless, should be put to the use of the parish in housing the poor. Again, the warning concerning offenders, prison and Star Chamber was invoked with an insistence on “Bricke” being used. It also included this new proviso:

Provided, neverthelesse, that if any person shall erect, or hath erected for the inlargement of his dwelling house, any building joyning to the same, hee shall not be taken or held to be an offendor against this Proclama- tion, so as the precinct of ground within the said addition or enlargement, amount not to any more then a third part of the precinct of ground within the olde foundation, and that it be used with the former for one onely habitation. (Larkin and Hughes 173–74)

You could enlarge or extend what was already in place, creating new foundations, in other words, as long as it was not more than a third of the size of that existing building, according to the 1607 edict; again, the edict emphasizes that the building must be a dwelling-place of some kind, “one onely habitation.” Perhaps what the Lincoln’s Inn law experts perceived across the fields was not work on a “habitation” but a playhouse, prompting them to feel justified in acting. Perhaps, instead, or also, the extension or adjunct to the building already in place was bigger than permissible. Whatever the case, records exist demonstrating how they were still intent on pursuing the matter, for by mid-October the playhouse was still being built and further action was felt to be needed. An appointment was recorded in the 6 eva griffith christopher beeston and the cockpit-phoenix in documents

Fig. 1. Detail from Wenceslas Hollar’s “Great Map” of “London and Westminster etc.” c.1658: Drury Lane, where the Cockpit was located on the triangular piece of land above “Drury Lane.”

Lincoln’s Inn “Black Books” at a council held on 15 October 1616, where Mr Ayliffe and Mr Pyne of the Bench, Mr Saunderson and Mr Chambers of the Bar, and Mr Lentall and Mr Rigby, under the Bar, were to attend “the Queenes Councell, with others of the Innes of Courte, touchinge the convertinge of the Cocke Pytte in the Feildes into a playe house.” At this point the language, mediated by a print account, indicates a single-building conversion (Baildon 180).11 It may have been unclear to the Lincoln’s Inn men what they were seeing, but Beeston’s argument back at the authorities in response to Shepperd’s arrest likely insisted that Shepperd-the-bricklayer was converting a cockpit, possibly including an extension in accordance with proclamations, not building anything new. Quite how this cockpit could also have been a dwelling-place is something to be explored further, but Beeston was, at this time, already seen as a great “offendor” when it came to erecting other buildings, with one project located elsewhere certainly seen as associated with his dwelling-place. Just over a week after John Shepperd came before the Middlesex justices, the Privy Council recorded a letter which they wrote to the High christopher beeston and the cockpit-phoenix in documents 7

Sheriff of that same county, dated 18 September. It was likely written in the context of the many exasperated and already alluded-to proclamations that had been issued about new building:

Wheras wee haue lately had Informacion from the Justices of peace of the Countye of Midlesex, of diuerse new Buildinges erected, or begoon to be erected, contrary to his Majesties Proclamacions . . . and amongst others, that theese persons whose Names wee send yow in a Schedule herinclosed are principall Offendors in that kinde, for that in Contempt of the sayd proclamacions and Orders, and so many warninges and Comandementes giuen them from time to time by the Justices of peace, to the Contrary they haue notwithstanding proceeded with the sayde Buildinges eyther in the Nighte, or otherwise by Stealth upon the suddaine, So as they could not be preuented: These are therefore to Require and Awthorise yow, to take present order, that the sayd howses and Buyldinges mentioned in this Schedule, be forthwith pulled downe to the Grownde, and utterly demolished: So as the Example therof and punishment of these fewe . . . may deterre all others from presuming to doe the like hereafter.

The “Schedule herinclosed” was entitled: “A note of such persons as are greate Offendors in Building, contrary to his Majesties Proclamacions, &c: and such as are fittest to be made an Example.” From the top they include these entries:

St. Clement Danes neere Lincolns Inne, by Bacons Rents. Richard Campe, is now erecting two howses upon New foundacions. To be pulled downe. . . . St. Martins in ye feildes John Thorpe hath begunne to erect three Tenementes so near St. Martins Churche as if they goe on, will much hinder the lighte of the same Church and giue greate annoyance to the same. They are to be pulled down. . . . Clarkenwell Christopher Beeston hath erected a base Tenement not of Bricke, and hauing been formerly prohibited, did promise to make it only an Addition to his owne dwelling howse, but since hath made a Tenement of it, distant from his howse, and neere to his Majesties passage. To be pulled down.12

Some confusion has occurred because of this record in the context of the difficulties Christopher Beeston endured over the Cockpit in Drury Lane at roughly the same time, with some scholars confusing or conflating the two sets because they occurred so closely together (e.g. Teague 253). As 8 eva griffith christopher beeston and the cockpit-phoenix in documents

the page of the Privy Council record makes clear, however, the parish which concerned the Middlesex authorities was not the Drury Lane St. Giles-in-the-Fields one but St. James, Clerkenwell, the Red Bull playhouse’s parish (Orrell 43–46). In 1616 Christopher Beeston and his family lived in the parish of St. James because he was, at that time, actor and manager of Queen Anna’s men at the Red Bull, St. John Street. In relation to the quite separate Drury Lane trouble, Beeston was ostensibly building his new playhouse for the Queen’s Servants as their indoor venue, to rival the King’s Men’s Blackfriars; it is not known what his wooden tenement in Clerkenwell represented. The sheriffs of Middlesex surveyed the situation quickly regarding his Clerkenwell venture, for a few pages later in the Privy Council records, confirmation came concerning the fact that the tenement had been, for the most part, taken down.13

Imprimis for Richard Campe wee finde noe such man nor any such houses abuildinge in St. Clemts dane . . . ffor John Thorpe his three Tenementes are pulled downe . . . ffor Christopher Bastones house it is for the most parte puld downe not to be inhabited.

By the following Autumn, however, another letter to the High Sheriff of Middlesex had to be written.

Whereas about a Twelue moneth since an expresse Comaundement was giuen unto the then Sherife of Middlesex your predecessor, for pulling downe Certeyne howses within the County of Middlesex neere adioyning unto the Citty of London suche as had been newly erected contrary to his Majesties proclamacions and in highe Contempt thereof; Amongst which number there was a base Tenement erected by one Christopher Beeston in Clarkenwell neere unto his Majesties passage pulled downe and demolished by uertue of the sayd Order, which since is buylt up agayne, and his Majesty of late passing that way hath taken special notice thereof, being highly offended with the presumption. Yow shall therefore by uertue of this our letter make yor present Repaire unto the place, and to Cause the sayd Buylding ymediatly and without delay before to morrow at night at the furthest being the last of this Moneth to be pulld downe to the grownde and utterly demolished, And to take sufficient Bondes of the Owner to his Majesties use, that neyther in that place, nor in any christopher beeston and the cockpit-phoenix in documents 9

other he shall Erect any Buylding hereafter contrary to his Majesties Proclamacions on that behalf. Or ells in case of Refusall, to Committ him to Prison till hee submit himself. All which wee require yow at your perill to see performed punctually and precisely as you will answer yor neglect unto his Majestie.14

At this point Christopher Beeston was at odds with King James regarding his Clerkenwell tenement and engaged with a problematic Drury Lane playhouse. This one introduced a personal complication for the king and his vision for a contained London: his wife.

Queen Anna and the playhouse in Drury Lane

The year before, the Lincoln’s Inn lawyers were planning their meeting with “the Queen’s Council.” The “Queen” referred to here was Anna of Denmark, the consort queen of James I, patron of the Queen’s Servants company to whom Beeston belonged. It is likely that the lawyers needed to approach Anna’s “council” about the playhouse problem because they realized it was a building with which she was associated.15 Queen Anna’s involvement is the most plausible reason why the matter of contravening the building regulations in Drury Lane had to be handled “privately.” However commercially intended this blot on the lawyers’ landscape was, and regardless of the legality of the new foundations in question, this was an indoor playhouse for royal entertainers, and, moreover, built within striking distance of Queen Anna’s new residence, Denmark House on the Strand. The matter certainly had to be approached with tact. Anna had already instigated shocking European-style entertainment at court (Griffith,Jacobean 114–15). Her Strand residence, adjacent to Drury Lane, had been built with the input of Inigo Jones, designer of many of her masques, who had just become the King’s Surveyor. Scholars suggest that the adjacency of the Inns of Court was a motivation for London theater’s move West, and there must be more than an element of truth in this (Munro 63); law students were engaged with drama and had the personal income to be able to afford attendance. Surely another consid- eration for Beeston when it came to the locale for his indoor playhouse was its proximity to the Queen’s London base by the River. Beeston’s playhouse was built.

The Cockpit and the 1617 Shrovetide riot

The year after this “private house” was converted or erected (with at- tachments and extensions, it seems), almost six months to the day after 10 eva griffith christopher beeston and the cockpit-phoenix in documents

John Shepperd the Bricklayer was arrested, an unhappy event occurred which, if reports are to be believed, affected the Cockpit playhouse badly: a Shrove Tuesday riot on 4 March 1617. As Edward Sherbourne reported on 8 March, four days after the event:

The Prentises on Shroue tewseday last; to the Nomber of 3. or. 4000, Comitted extreame insolencies; part of this nomber, taking their Course for Wapping, hauing ^did^ their pull downe to the grownd 4 houses, spoiled all the goods therein, defaced many others, & a Justice of Peace coming to appease them, while he was reading a Proclamacion, had his head broken with a brick batt; Th’other part, making for Drury Lane, (where lately a newe Playhouse is erected) they besett the house round, broke in, wounded diuers of the Players, broke open their Trunkes; and whatt apparell, bookes, or other things, they found, they burnt and cutt in peeces, and not content herewith, gott on the Top of the house, and untiled it, and had not the Justices of Peace, and Sherife levied an aide and hindred their purpose, they would have laid that house likewise even with the grownd; In this skyrimishe, one prentise was slaine, being shott throughe the head with a pistoll, and many other of their fellowes were sore hurt, and such of them as are taken his Majestie hath Commanded shalbe executed for example sake.16

This account, if true, indicates that the Cockpit had the players’ be- longings in it put away in trunks, i.e. costumes and “books” (possibly scripts) were stored there; it was a tiled theater. Concerning the venue in the context of the occasion, we learn that someone present had a pistol and another was in possession of a “brickbat”. From this report, echoed in other accounts, the event involved thou- sands of people and there was a threat that they would be punished severely. Yet we have no evidence of the arrest of hordes, only of thirty odd according to the Middlesex Sessions Books, including Henricus Baldwin, John Grymes, Christoferus Longe, Christoferus Lewes, Thomas Coye, Johannes Peirson, Eleanora Piffe, Richardus Kemishe, Williamus Austen, Johanna danyell, Williamus Trahearne, Petrus Johnson, Thomas Tales, and Susanna fforde. Of the fourteen accused of damaging the household and goods of two individuals, Xpofer Beeston and “Richard Loe att Whitechappell,” six pleaded “not guilty and did not retract.” The rest pleaded guilty and were “taken back in irons for a year” with fines of either “vili. xiiis. iiiid” or else forty shillings. Encouragement was given to these to find good sureties, mainpernors“ for good conduct” ( Jeaffreson 220–21). Robert Harvy, Henry Bleake, John Vergo, Andreas Watson, Richard Sandes, William Perkins, John Gallante, Adam Drying, and christopher beeston and the cockpit-phoenix in documents 11

Robert Hutchins were all “Taken back for sureties for their appearance at the next Gaol Delivery for the County of Middlesex, and for their good behaviour in the meantime” ( Jeaffreson 222). Likewise, Williamus Kempe, Johannes Pennye, Richardus Carter, Rogerus Winnall, Thomas Snowden, Edwardus Ledgingham, and Thomas Prowse. 17 Of all the whole group only four were arrested in relation to “a riotous assalte & spoyle done upon the dwellinge house of xp’ofer Beeston.” Note the precise description here. On the list of those apprehended, the only reference to damaged goods belonging to Beeston refers to his “dwellinge house,” the term used in the proclamation that went on to synthesize itself as associated with the term “private house.” Moreover, the lists of people to be found at the London Metropolitan Archives were not, as a group, only accused of rioting in Drury Lane, but Wapping also. Some of the throng obviously went East, and some went West. A few were women: Elenora Piffe, Joanna Daniel, and Susanna Ford. Current scholarship detects a consolidation of Shrovetide rioting with the reign of James I where evidence exists of riot in eighteen of the twenty-two years of the rule, and the early years were not without signifi- cance to Christopher Beeston. In 1607, as well as a two-hundred-strong group focusing on expensive glass-breaking in Old Street, another rabble made for Turnmill Street, the red-light area of the early modern London suburbs, adjacent to the Red Bull where Beeston was a prominent mem- ber. Here miscreants broke doors and windows before turning left along Cowcross Street where the will to do damage was similarly expressed.18 This evidence concerning Beeston’s “dwellinge house” raises the question of what the nature of this playhouse could have been or, at least, what was truly “adjoining” this structure and what was converted or built. It seems this playhouse had a direct physical relationship not only with a cock-fighting venue but also with another house of a more domestic nature. If the arrangement had been of such a kind, this would have been in line with the building proclamations which specified new foundations could only be formulated if this was the case.

What was “the Cockpit”?

Records like the ones recited above provide evidence about the Cock- pit-Phoenix. We know the playhouse had bricks because a bricklayer was arrested for new foundations and because it was illegal to build or rebuild with anything else. We know the theater roof had tiles because the so- called apprentices are reported de-tiling it. We also possess indications 12 eva griffith christopher beeston and the cockpit-phoenix in documents

Fig. 2. Worcester College, Oxford, “7B.”

that a chosen cockpit or cockpits joined onto another building when the conversion took place. Deciding to erect an indoor playhouse to complement their amphitheater, the modern Shakespeare’s Globe complex alighted on designs for a seventeenth-century playhouse that concurred with what we know of the bricks-and-tiles nature of the Cockpit. Then thought to be by Inigo Jones (in the Cockpit’s time the newly appointed King’s Surveyor who had already designed court masques and had helped with the develop- ment of Queen Anna’s Denmark House), these designs were dated to the sixteen-teens and are located at Worcester College, Oxford. To the untrained eye they could easily represent either an independent structure or one that joined on to something, particularly in view of the fact that only one external door is shown on one of the four drawings (see Figure 2). But trouble was to come for Shakespeare’s Globe when architectural historians eventually concluded that the playhouse designs could not be dated to 1616 after all, later deciding that they were not even drawn by Jones. What, however, always confused the matter was another drawing housed at another location, namely a design for an unspecified produc- tion drawn by Jones in 1639. It resides at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire (see Figure 3). christopher beeston and the cockpit-phoenix in documents 13

Fig. 3. Inigo Jones, “A BESEIGED CITY”, The Trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement]

Listed in the 1960s Festival Designs by Inigo Jones as “A BESIEGED CITY,” this scenery to an entertainment including tents, clouds and a city in relief, is described as for an “Unidentified Court Play.” The identifier eschewed the idea that this scenery was for a public playhouse venue hinted at by the black ink ascription above it. I would transcribe this as saying: “for ye cokpitt for my lo Chambralen 1639.” Describing it as for a “Court” play would indicate something other than a publicly accessible venue. “Suggestions have been made that the design relates to Davenant’s The Siege . . . and a less convincing one that it relates to the Cockpit in Drury Lane during Davenant’s brief tenure,” the notes say (Strong no. 104). 14 eva griffith christopher beeston and the cockpit-phoenix in documents

Somewhat confusingly, there was, indeed, a court venue called the Cockpit, situated in Whitehall. In 1973, however, Iain Mackintosh, as- serting the “for ye cokpitt” heading was in Jones’s “own hand,” saw the Chatsworth sketch as one that “could fit” the Worcester College, Oxford designs. These, he argued were indeed of the Drury Lane playhouse. John Orrell, a major contributor to the modern-day Globe complex, took up the reins of this argument in 1985, coming firmly down on the Drury Lane side and saying that the theater drawings were “certainly in Jones’s hand.” Of the Chatsworth sketch he denied the idea that it could have been for the Cockpit in Whitehall, writing how “hard” it was to see its height as appropriate to “the much more horizontal scope of the White- hall building after its conversion” (Orrell 62). In 1989, John Harris and Gordon Higgott’s Inigo Jones: Complete Architectural Drawings put a line under the thought that the Worcester College theater designs could have been of the original theater of 1616–17 (a view Harris had supported in 1973) saying that they were drawn in Jones’s “thick outline style of about 1638” (Harris and Higgott 266). They did, however, agree that the Chatsworth perspective stage sketch fitted the Oxford playhouse designs (assuredly of the “cokpitt” therefore). In the run-up to final decisions by the Shakespeare’s Globe group about what to do with their own already dug foundations, however, Higgott changed his mind again, deciding that the Worcester College Oxford designs were not drawn by Jones after all but were rather penned by John Webb, his pupil, and executed much later, in the 1660s.19 Where that put the Chatsworth design, always accepted to be by Jones and unlikely to be for the Cockpit in Whitehall, we are left to wonder. Higgott, as far as I understand it, never went into print with his Webb-bound claims, preferring to sound out his beliefs in symposia and in a little film available, currently, on the internet.20 Regardless, the Globe decided to go with a version of the Worcester College designs, making the interior Jacobean in style.21

Graham Barlow

At around the same time as the Orrell/Harris and Higgott debate, one person, now deceased, was enervated into a different kind of scholarly action through his uneasy feeling that the first theater in Drury Lane could not have been a playhouse like the one detailed at Oxford. The data about the feet-and-inches Cockpit was researched by Dr Graham Barlow, who published his findings inTheatre Research International in 1988. Barlow’s aim in his article was not to query the playhouse’s documents in the way christopher beeston and the cockpit-phoenix in documents 15

I have done in this article so far, but to show how Wenceslas Hollar’s 1650s aerial view of the Drury area was generally accurate and that, given this, there was no sign or room on that piece of land for any classically- weighted building such as the Oxford one (see Figure 1). Central to the more practical outcomes of his thesis was the fact, as Barlow saw it, that “Hollar drew a three storeyed, three gabled squarish structure” in the location where the Cockpit of the 1650s should be. This was after taking seriously a remark of Hotson’s about looking to find the theater on Hollar’s map (Barlow 30–31). Barlow’s presentation is complex, with several impressive maps and plans. Looking to selective texts from some of the law cases to do with the venue, he included in his research what he felt was of use from deeds recorded in rolls at the National Archives alongside other texts from the Middlesex Deeds Registry and the Metropolitan Board of Works (both now residing at the London Metropolitan Archives). These enabled him to look at Drury Lane land more carefully. With the Middlesex Deeds Registry, what we are discussing are registrations of texts affecting property (including deeds and wills) made in line with an Act of Parliament of 1708 (The Middlesex Registry Act, 7 Ann c 20). With legal incentives and compulsions prompting these entries, transactions are described with varying levels of detail, but they can be useful for historians who wish to trace portions of land and their histories during a period from 1709 and 1938.22 The Metropolitan Board of Works came about in response to the “Ar- tisans & Labourers Dwellings Improvement Act” of 1875. With the bet- tering of London very much its aim, the Board had plans to change the Drury Lane area in view of the “1800 people . . . living in seventy-seven houses” which had been identified (Barlow 31). In this way, property was compulsorily purchased by the Board of Works, resulting in several entries in the Deeds Register between them and the leaseholders/freeholders of relevant properties. Barlow believed these texts described relationships back to the earliest seventeenth-century transactions. Subsequent scholars took Barlow’s findings very seriously, invoking his detailed work to support the opinion that the Oxford drawings could not represent the Cockpit in Drury Lane. Barlow’s stated sources are of limited value, obsolete or not up to the hopes he had for them. His article starts with the phrase “In 1616 Christopher Beeston converted a cockpit in Drury Lane . . . ” but by the next page he prefers to go with “in 1617 when Christopher Beeston made the initial conversion . . . ” (Barlow 30–31). Going on from this, and 16 eva griffith christopher beeston and the cockpit-phoenix in documents

perhaps because he did not know of John Shepperd’s arrest for creating a new foundation for the playhouse, there seems to be ignorance that new building-work was part of the Cockpit theater project, a piece of information vital when trying to identify a correct building on a map. When it comes to his documents, with reference to his Middlesex Deeds Register entries, for instance, discussing the now identified and updated LMA MDR/1877/036/0001–0499, no.243, in note 12 of his work, concerned with property “north of the Cockpit site” (no. 137 Drury Lane) and note 17 (Barlow 42) he identifies this entry as to do with the tenure of one “Chadwick.” In note 25, however (Barlow 43), he identifies the owner named in this record as one “Haines” of “136” Drury Lane. The true entry is about Chadwick who owned 137 Drury Lane, not 136, which was not “north” of Barlow’s assertion of where the Cockpit was located. The text of this record includes feet and inches alongside a drawing, and so is quite valuable. A true Haines record, concerning 133 Drury Lane, is found today at LMA MDR/1880/009/0501–1124, no.721 which Barlow correctly published in note 25. However, back at note 12 he put in a record for 138 Drury Lane and 18 Great Wild Street from the latter mentioned volume (vol.9 of 1880) as no. 786. This has a drawn plot but is of Clapham High Road, south of the River Thames, and not of any plot around Drury Lane (LMA MDR/1880/009/0501–1124, no.786). It has nothing to do with anyone called “Haines” (the margins indicate “Godfrey to Bateman”). Both the relevant but inaccurate entries discussed here (leaving aside Clapham) have drawings with scales in feet. Yet neither has a genealogy of these plots of land going back to any recognizable early modern names from the Cockpit playhouse’s past. For information’s sake, there are fifteen Middlesex Deeds Register entries which Barlow uses, but only five with drawings, and only four of those involve Drury Lane frontage; the fifth is about Great Wild Street. Of course what Barlow no doubt correctly assumed is that the playhouse would have been situated around the nineteenth century’s “Pitt Place,” which was somewhere between Drury Lane and Wild Street; however, as the theater is located in texts as at “Drury Lane,” the assumption must be that it was accessible towards that end of the land. There is only one text of a register entry which describes feet and inches to do with Drury Lane and this is only of a small number of feet where there is more space (workshops, warehouses and buildings) mentioned to the rear without any measurement. This is in the Chadwick entry of 137 Drury Lane mentioned before. Only three of Barlow’s Deeds Registry records mention anyone included in any of the known texts of the Cockpit site, only one identifiably to do with Drury christopher beeston and the cockpit-phoenix in documents 17

Lane (Simes, LMA MDR/1878/1878/002/0501–1056, no.615); that is, no.134 Drury Lane, which has a drawing. The others are of Holdford Alley and some property on the corner of Pitt Place with Great Wild Street and both are without drawings. Although the use of Middlesex Deeds registrations seems impressive, while the locations of most of the plots are obscure and cannot be traced back to the known names in records associated with Beeston’s Cockpit, none of these findings can be of any value. We simply do not know where, between Drury Lane and Wilde Street, the Cockpit-Phoenix could have been located, because none of the early documents give us this information; nor do Barlow’s findings.23 All the evidence we have to date suggests Beeston’s building work included an extension to a conversion of a building which had been a cockpit prior to 1616. This, in turn, was connected in some way to another building, apparently a domestic habitation and thus Beeston aligned himself correctly with the legislation of his time. This explains the sessions records which do not, in fact, record damage to a playhouse per se, but to “the dwellinge house of xp’ofer Beeston,” in to which he had no doubt moved by March 1617. If a topographical scholar really wants to try and trace the playhouse on Hollar’s map, there are indications of such buildings attached to others, but I, for one, do not see it as essential that the playhouse be wholly present on the map, especially given the nature of the built-up buildings in the area masking others within its three-dimensional perspective.

Continuing scholarship

This special issue seeks to further scholarship on the Cockpit. Lucy Munro picks up the next part of the story. During Christmas 1618, Beeston was recorded (by his fellow players of Queen Anna) as leaving their company to set up by himself with his playhouse, much to their chagrin. The Cockpit-Phoenix did not have to belong to this company; Beeston had paid for it, it was Beeston’s to do with as he wished. But then later in 1619 Queen Anna died, and the status of her company was in a state of flux. With this the case, Beeston, as free as a flying Phoenix, was able to pick and choose what troupe and what style of troupe he went with, bearing in mind that it was always best to be supportive of companies whose plays would bring audiences in to all the playhouses where he had an interest. These included both the Red Bull in Clerken- well and the Curtain in Shoreditch as well as his own Cockpit-Phoenix. 18 eva griffith christopher beeston and the cockpit-phoenix in documents

With King James’s death in 1625 a new reign ensued, and Beeston found himself heading a Queen’s company again, with the actors who would give the 1620s-30s Cockpit-Phoenix its distinctive and stylish flavor before Beeston’s death in 1638. Queen Henrietta Maria’s company consisted of some of the old troupe of actors from Beeston’s days with Queen Anna’s. These most notably included Richard Perkins and Thomas Heywood, active during the Cockpit’s heyday, and with the input of writers like John Ford and James Shirley. Munro shines a light on this period through her focus on Henrietta Maria and her patronage. It is no mean definition of “patronage” that Munro attends to as she isolates, in particular, one royal payment record of 1630, an earlier date during Charles’s reign than has been previously discussed in relation to the queen’s drama. Munro’s essay gives us royal performance contexts in a variety of physical and political settings, which demonstrates within what relationships, both familial and entertainment-centered, the queen might express approval that was equal to her husband’s. It also shows how these public playhouse performers and writers could be both honored and confused by such female royal generosity, as Munro explores the medium of, for example, prologues and epilogues written at the time. In his article for this issue, Eoin Price considers Beeston’s Cockpit venture as a daring exercise in repertory innovation. This innovation is not simply founded in the introduction of new plays and new writers but also in the company’s way of picking up old plays, and sometimes making surprising choices. The rhetorical question of perplexing import is embodied in Price’s title: “Why was The Knight of the Burning Pestle revived?” This was an especially puzzling play to resurrect at the Drury Lane Cockpit instigated by a Beeston-led company, for Beeston was, at that time, leading one-time members of the previous Red Bull troupe (including himself ) who had been on the receiving end of Beaumont’s City-lampooning satire when it was first produced. As Price reveals, however, the story is much more complicated than that. Somewhere, in the first instance, in the middle of Price’s listed theories as to why the play failed the first time, is a query about the utility of failure itself. As a response to this, perhaps, he gives us the shock of its supposed success when produced for the second time by the company closest to the receipt of that painful satire. On another level of investigation, he sets the deci- sion to produce it again within the context of its surrounding repertoire, as a genre-breaking play alongside other genre-breaking plays, as a play- satirizing drama in a repertoire including the plays it satirizes. christopher beeston and the cockpit-phoenix in documents 19

Christopher Matusiak, the discipline’s long-term Beeston expert, considers the Drury Lane theater during the Civil War era. Taking as his cue the idea of the sign of the original “Cockpitts,” no doubt depict- ing belligerent fowl in baited mood, he recreates a tense, crisis-ridden playhouse where at one moment William Beeston, Christopher’s son, is ejected as company manager for producing unlicensed work, and at another, William Davenant is ousted while acting in support of the Earl of Strafford. Matusiak queries why, on the King’s Men’s return to Lon- don during the 1640s, it was the Cockpit they decided to visit with their performances. He tells the story of the players’ sojourn there using both the broader stroke of known Civil War history, alongside, for example, political report and new, detailed, archival work from sources at British repositories, setting the impressive whole within parish theological and local military contexts. The issue ends with the return of Davenant to the Cockpit in the 1650s, and Stephen Watkins’s bold reimagining of how what happened in Drury Lane paved the way for not only post-Restoration drama but Interregnum opera as well; the Theatre Royal was not the only successor to Beeston’s Cockpit, the Royal Opera House was a cousin too. Watkins goes through the arguments concerning to what extent Davenant’s experi- ments with masque and recitative could be said to develop into English “opera.” Finally, coming back to my own work, I should say that a great deal more can be researched and written about the Cockpit-Phoenix. Yet as for knowing what it was truly like, the only straightforward avenue available to us (with the help of a few willing parties) is an archaeological survey with locations chosen carefully with, perhaps, the aid of helpmeets like Hollar’s map. This is an important theater.24 The Cockpit-Phoenix was a Jacobean playhouse that established London’s West End, beginning, as it did, with a builder’s arrest and ending with a king’s Restoration.

Notes

1London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) MJ/SB/R/002, 344. 2The change in name occurred after the playhouse was amended in 1617 (after a riot discussed in this article). It was chosen to invoke the story of the mythological bird which regenerated from its own ashes. The other contributors in this volume continue to call the playhouse the “Cockpit” to reflect the ongoing use of this name throughout the theater’s existence. This was alongside its more classically-weighted title. 20 eva griffith christopher beeston and the cockpit-phoenix in documents

3The Oxford English Dictionary perceives this term to mean “to the West End of a city, esp. London” and is a nineteenth-century one; twenty-first-century historians, however, have used it when discussing fashionable society in the City of Westminster taking root there before the Civil War (Merritt 193). 4LMA MJ/SB/R/002, 344. 5The event took place at the London Metropolitan Archives on 9 September 2017 and was called “The First Playhouse in Drury Lane: a Symposium on the Cockpit-Phoenix.” It was led by Rebecca Bailey (Liverpool John Moores University) and me. Jason Morell led a group of five other actors performing significant Cockpit-Phoenix plays includingThe Knight of the Burning Pestle, Tis Pity She’s A Whore, The White Devil, The Fair Maid of the West, The Siege of Rhodes and two plays by James Shirley: The School of Complement and The Young Admiral. The performers were: Nigel Hastings, Tunji Kasim, Cassie Layton, Dale Mathurin and Charlotte Moore. Seventeenth-century music was played by Musica Antica Rotherhithe: Oliver Doyle, Jessica Eucker, and lutenist Peter Martin. The symposium was supported by the Society for Renaissance Studies, the British Shakespeare Association, and Liverpool John Moores University. 6Even before the Globe amphitheater’s opening in 1997, Sam Wanamaker’s plan was always to include an accompanying indoor venue. The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse opened there in 2014. See Griffith “Playing.” 7National Archives (TNA) C2/Chas.I/H44/66, Thomas Hussey v. Robert Rolleston (Hussey’s bill of complaint). See Hotson 88–100. The second house mentioned was interpreted by Hotson as “a lodging for the keeper of the game- cocks.” 8TNA C2/Chas.I/H28/26, Sir Lewis and Dame Elizabeth Kirkes’ answer. The entire group that let to Beeston consisted of: “John Best in the Bill named John Chambers Thomas West Edward Underwood Thomas Wigg Walter Lee and Jeremy ffisher.” 9LMA MJ/SB/R/002, 347. 10Eoin Price sees the term starting with John Ford’s The Lover’s Melancholy in 1629 and calculates that there were 42 first editions of commercial plays which use “Private House” between that time and 1642 with a further 22 printed between 1643 and 1660 (51). 11In the Baildon printed account the “e” at the end of the word “Pytte” could possibly denote a plural depending on its formation, i.e. “the converting of the Cocke Pyttes . . . into a playe house.” 12TNA PC 2/28, 399–400. 13TNA PC 2/28, 422. 14TNA PC 2/29, 129. Recorded at a Council meeting at Hampton Court on Sunday 28 September 1617. 15See Herbert Berry’s observations in Wickham, Berry and Ingram 627 (section 482). 16TNA SP 14/90, fol. 193v. State Papers Online. 17LMA MJ/GB/R/002, fol.114d-115d. christopher beeston and the cockpit-phoenix in documents 21

18With thanks to Taylor Aucoin for letting me see a draft of his chapter “Riot and Restitution” from his festive-centered thesis (covering the years including the 1617 riot). 19Higgott’s “Demonstrations” is a downloadable pdf of a paper given in 2005, presented as a work in progress; it does not seem aware that the Beeston Clerkenwell trouble for building was separate from that of Drury Lane where Beeston was not found guilty of any contraventions. 20Professor Gordon Higgott, “Example of study of the subject of Architectural drawings of 17th Century.” Ignition Films, Vida Triple Vision. Producer, Alison Sterling. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCJZOwMNuW0 21For praise of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, see Griffith, “Playing.” For first-hand descriptive content and research on its first seasons see Will Tosh, Playing Indoors: Staging Early Modern Drama at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2018. 22The London Metropolitan Archives downloadable “Leaflet Number 38: The Middlesex Deeds Registry 1708–1938”, 2. https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/ things-to-do/london-metropolitan-archives/visitor-information/Documents/38- middlesex-deeds-registry.pdf 23With reference to National Archive C54 rolls to which Barlow referred, helpful to those interested in early modern property, C54/3680/40 “Holford & Seagood” at Barlow note 13 has to be C54/3680, no.11 (membrane 32). “C54/3984/10” as in Barlow note 12 takes us to “Skynner & others & Carey” about property in Plymouth and forfeitures during the Commonwealth, a long way from Drury Lane. The “Holford & Stratton” entry begins on membrane 11 of this same roll. It is number 35, not 10 (and so forth). Some of the errone- ous numbers make a kind of sense in that they can represent different parts or manifestations of the document. But location within the roll is key. Concerning court cases, “C2 Chas.I H44/26” (notes 14–16) does not exist as a relevant 1647 document, what Barlow meant was, as context indicates, H44/66 (part of the Hussey v. Kirks, Rolleston et al case). 24I refer to the discovery of Richard III’s remains in a car park in Leicester. The September 2017 Cockpit-Phoenix symposium concluded with a panel of experts discussing “Recent Theatre History, Theatre History, Archaeology and Architecture” with the central question including “Can we call 1616 the beginning of ‘West End’ theatre?” The panelists included Julia Merritt, Peter McCurdy (builder of the Globe and the Sam Wanamaker) and Paul McGarrity, archaeologist at Museum of London Archaology.

Works Cited

Primary sources

British Museum, Worcester College, Oxford, Trustees of the Chatsworth Settle- ment. 22 eva griffith christopher beeston and the cockpit-phoenix in documents

The National Archives, Kew (TNA) C2/Chas.I/H44/66 PC 2/28, 399–400 PC 2/28, 422 PC 2/29, 129 SP 14/90, fol.193v C54/3680, no.11 (membrane 32) C54/3984, no.35 (membrane 11) London Metropolitan Archives, Clerkenwell (LMA) Middlesex Sessions: MJ/SB/R/002, 344 MJ/SB/R/002, 347 MJ/GB/R/002, fol.114d-115d Middlesex Deeds Registry: MDR/1877/036/0001–0499, no.23 MDR/1878/002/0501–1056, no.615 MDR/1880/009/0501–1124, no.721 MDR/1880/009/0501–1124, no.786

Secondary sources

Baildon, W.P., editor. The Records of the Honorable Society of Lincoln’s Inn: The Black Books. Vol. 2, Lincoln’s Inn, 1898. Barlow, Graham. “Wenceslas Hollar and Christopher Beeston’s Phoenix Theatre in Drury Lane.” Theatre Research International, vol. 13, no.1, Spring 1988, pp. 30–44. Bentley, Gerald Eades. The Jacobean and Caroline Stage. Vol. 2, Clarendon. Griffith, Eva.A Jacobean Company and Its Playhouse: The Queen’s Servants at the Red Bull Theatre (c.1605–1619). Cambridge UP, 2013. —— “Playing Indoors.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5798, 16 May 2014, p.15. Harris, John, and Gordon Higgott. Inigo Jones: Complete Architectural Drawings. The Drawing Center, 1989. Higgott, Gordon. “The Chamber of Demonstrations: Reconstructing the Jaco- bean Indoor Playhouse.” https://www.bristol.ac.uk/drama/jacobean/research4. html Honigmann, E.A.J. and Susan Brock, editors. Playhouse Wills 1558–1642: An Edition of Wills by Shakespeare and his Contemporaries in London Theatre. Manchester UP, 1993. Hotson, Leslie. Commonwealth and Restoration Stage. Russell & Russell, 1928. Jeaffreson, John Cordy, editor. Middlesex County Records. Middlesex County Record Society, 1886–1892, 4 vols. Larkin, James F. and Paul L. Hughes, editors. Stuart Royal Procalmations Volume I: Royal Proclamations of King James I 1603–1625. Clarendon, 1973. christopher beeston and the cockpit-phoenix in documents 23

Mackintosh, Iain. “Inigo Jones – Theatre Architect.” TABS, vol. 31, no. 3, Sept 1973, pp.99–105. Merritt, Julia. Westminster 1640–60: A Royal City in a Time of Revolution. Man- chester UP, 2013. Munro, Lucy. Children of the Queen’s Revels: A Jacobean Theatre Repertory. Cam- bridge UP, 2005. Orrell, John. The Theatres of Inigo Jones and John Webb. Cambridge UP, 1985. Pearman, Hugh. “A heavenly performance.” Culture Section, The Sunday Times, 12.01.14, pp.18–19. Price, Eoin. Public and Private Playhouses in Renaissance England: The Politics of Publication. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Strong, Roy, cataloguer. Festival Designs by Inigo Jones: An Exhibition of Draw- ings for Scenery and Costumes for the Court Masques of James I and Charles I. International Exhibitions Foundation, 1967–68. Teague, Francis. “The Phoenix and the Cockpit-in-Court Playhouses.” The Ox- ford Handbook of Early Modern Theatre. Edited by Richard Dutton, Oxford UP, 2009, pp.240–259. Tosh, Will. Playing Indoors: Staging Early Modern Drama at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2018. Wickham, Glynne, Herbert Berry and William Ingram, editors. English Profes- sional Theatre, 1530–1660. Cambridge UP, 2000.