Page:Once a Week Jul - Dec 1859.pdf/480

3, 1859.] that he left his property in the theatre to the management of his son Cuthbert, who, following the example of his father, became a partner in the building of the Globe on the Bankside; so that, ﬁrst to last, the Burbadges were closely mixed up with the great age of the drama from its beginning to the very topmost pinnacle of its glory. But still more curious was it that Shakspeare, who did not appear upon the scene until Burbadge, the father, had done all the rough work, and prepared the temples for the high ceremonies of our stage literature, should become mixed up, in the long-run, with the very ﬁrst playhouse, and should come to play and write under the shadow of its timbers. It happened in this way. Cuthbert Burbadge, finding that he could not obtain a renewal of his lease, in the expectation of which so prodigal an outlay had been incurred, determined not to leave the theatre behind him for the beneﬁt of Goodman Allen; and, accordingly, collecting together some twenty friends, armed with swords, axes, daggers and other weapons and implements, he proceeded to take down the wood-work. Goodman Allen was by no means disposed to yield up the materials (for he professed to hold the play house, as a playhouse, in abhorrence) without a struggle; and he gathered his followers together to resist Burbadge and his men. A battle royal ensued. But Cuthbert won the day, and triumph antly transported to the Bankside the whole of the wood that composed the theatre in Shoreditch, and applied it to the enlargement of the Globe, where Shakspeare was writing plays and James Burbadge acting in them.

Thus came to a violent end the First Playhouse, after having run through a successful career of nearly a quarter of a century. The Curtain survived it, but gradually fell into disrepute; the current of popularity, as time advanced, setting in towards Southwark in the summer, and Blackfriars in the winter.

James Burbadge did not live to witness the demolition of “The Theatre.” He died before the lease was quite expired, and, like all the Burbadges, for three or four generations after, was buried in the populous churchyard of St. Leonard’s, near his merry friend and neighbour, Dick Tarlton, who had taken up a tenement in God’s Acre about eight years before. Dick, the prince of jesters, and the most illustrious of our historical clowns, lived, as they all did, in Holywell Street (known in after times as High Street), and was not only an actor of especial merit, but one of the Earl of Leicester’s servants. He was in close alliance with the Burbadges, and from him, in all probability, Richard, the actor, derived his name.

The attachment of this ﬁrst playhouse family to the quarter in which they originally struck root is remarkable. Their growing fortunes never tempted them to wander from their early homestead; and even Cuthbert, whose material interest lay chiefly in the Borough, and Richard, whose celebrity might have excused a flight into more fashionable regions, continued to their deaths to reside in the old street in Shoreditch.

The widow of James Burbadge was no less steadfast than the rest. She outlived her husband seven years, and followed him to the same churchyard which already contained the ashes of some of her children, and in which the rest of them were afterwards deposited.