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 6 August 1655. This site was used for tenements, which in course of time were replaced by The Times office which now occupies the site.

ii. THE WHITEFRIARS

[Bibliographical Note.—The relevant dissertations are P. Cunningham, The Whitefriars, the Salisbury Court, and the Duke's Theatres (1849, Sh. Soc. Papers, iv. 89), J. Greenstreet, ''The Whitefriars Theatre in the Time of Shakspere (1888, N. S. S. Trans.'' 269), with text of the Bill and Answer in the Chancery suit of Androwes v. Slater (1609), and A. W. Clapham, The Topography of the Carmelite Priory of London (1910, Brit. Arch. Assoc. Journal, n. s. xvi. 15), with seventeenth-century plan of the precinct, reproduced by Adams, 312.]

The only suggestion of a sixteenth-century play-house in the Whitefriars is to be found in the statement of Richard Rawlidge in 1628 that one was suppressed there at a date under Elizabeth which he does not specify, but which may most plausibly be put at 1596 (cf. p. 359). It is not improbable that Rawlidge wrote 'Whitefriars' when he should have written 'Blackfriars', but Malone (Var. iii. 46, 52) accepted the statement and assigned the suppression to 1580. I do not suppose that Collier had any other basis than this for the 'more then 30 yeares' of the following description which he alleged to be an extract from 'an original survey of some part of the precinct, made in March 1616' in his possession, and printed in his New Facts (1835), 44:

'The Theater is situate near vnto the Bishopps House, and was in former times a hall or refectorie belonging to the dissolved Monastery. It hath beene vsed as a place for the presentation of playes and enterludes for more then 30 yeares, last by the Children of her Majestie. It hath little or no furniture for a playhouse, saving an old tottered curten, some decayed benches, and a few worne out properties and peeces of Arras for hangings to the stage and tire house. The raine hath made its way in and if it bee not repaired, it must soone be plucked downe or it will fall.'