Note 520 — Chapter XV

Prynne, in Histriomastix (1633), p. 491, quotes a passage from Richard Reulidge's Monster Lately Found Out and Discovered (1628), in which there is a reference to a playhouse as existing in Whitefriars "not long after" 1580. By "playhouse" Reulidge possibly meant an inn used for acting; but the whole passage, written by a Puritan after the lapse of nearly half a century, is open to grave suspicion, especially in its details. Again Richard Flecknoe, in A Short Discourse of the English Stage (1664), states that the Children of the Chapel Royal acted in Whitefriars. But that he confused the word "Whitefriars" with "Blackfriars" is shown by the rest of his statement.