Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 2).pdf/549

 different design. The verses on the fire by which it was destroyed speak of the stage-house 'as round as taylers clewe', and the early Hondius map, while it shows the Rose as polygonal, shows the Globe as circular, with the upper half of less diameter than the lower. This construction reappears in the Delaram drawings, and is so peculiar that the representation may well be realistic. There was an obvious precedent for the amphitheatrical form in the bear and bull rings which preceded the public theatres, and I do not know that we need go back with Ordish to a tradition of round mediaeval play-places, Cornish or English, or to the remains of Roman occupation. A ring is the natural form in which the maximum number of spectators can press about an object of interest.

There is nothing to show that, for the main fabric, any material but timber was used, until the Fortune was rebuilt of brick in 1623. Timber is provided for in the contracts for the earlier Fortune and the Hope, and these were modelled on the Globe and Swan. Oak was to be mainly used for the Hope; no fir in the lower or middle stories. Burbadge's law-*suits show that timber was the chief object of his expenditure on the Theatre, although some ironwork was also employed, presumably to tie the woodwork together. The dismantled fabric of the Theatre was used for the Globe. Henslowe used a good deal of timber for the repairs of the Rose in 1592-3, and did the house 'about with ealme bordes' in 1595. There was also some brickwork, and the Fortune and Hope were to have brick foundations, a foot above the ground. The Fortune was to be covered with lath, lime, and hair without. Henslowe also used plaster, and I do not see anything inconsistent with a substantially wooden structure in De Witt's statement that the Swan was 'constructum ex coaceruato lapide pyrritide ligneis suffultum columnis'. This has been regarded as an error which prejudices the reliability of De Witt's observations, but the description is too precise to be disproved by Hentzner's generalized 'lignea', and after all the strength of the building was naturally in the columns, and the flints and mortar—a common form of walling in the chalk districts of England—may well have filled up the interstices between these. De Witt adds that the columns might deceive the shrewdest 'ob illitum marmoreum colorem'.