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of the paper, or other stuff, wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the thatch, where being thought at first but an idle smoke, and their eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly, and ran round like a train, consuming within less than an hour the whole house to the very grounds. This was the fatal period of that virtuous fabric, wherein yet nothing did perish but wood and straw, and a few forsaken cloaks; only one man had his breeches set on fire, that would perhaps have broiled him, if he had not by the benefit of a provident wit put it out with bottle ale.'

On 8 July John Chamberlain wrote to Sir Ralph Winwood:

'The burning of the Globe, or play-house, on the Bankside, on St. Peter's day, cannot escape you; which fell out by a peal of chambers (that I know not upon what occasion were to be used in the play), the tamplin or stopple of one of them lighting in the thatch that covered the house, burn'd it down to the ground in less than two hours, with a dwelling-house adjoining, and it was a great marvaile and fair grace of God, that the people had so little harm, having but two narrow doors to get out.'

Nor was poetic chronicles of the disaster lacking. On the day after the fire took place, two ballads about it were entered in the Stationers' Register. Neither is known in print, but the use of the word 'doleful' suggests that one of them, of which the author was William Parrat, is probably identical with the following set of verses, preserved in manuscript:

A Sonnett upon the pittiful burneing of the Globe playhowse in London.

Now sitt the downe, Melpomene, Wrapt in a sea-cole robe, And tell the dolefull tragedie, That late was playd at Globe; For noe man that can singe and saye [But ?] was scard on St. Peters daye. Oh sorrow, pittifull sorrow, and yett all this is true. in The Gentleman's Magazine (1816), lxxxvi. 114, 'from an old manuscript volume of poems and therefrom by Collier, i. 371, and Hazlitt, E. D. S. 225.]