Note 685 — Chapter XX

The reasons why the Cockpit at Whitehall has remained so long in obscurity (its history is here attempted for the first time) are obvious. Some scholars have confused it with the public playhouse of the same name, a confusion which persons in the days of Charles avoided by invariably saying "The Cockpit in Drury Lane." Other scholars have confused it with the residential section of Whitehall which bore the same name. During the reign of James several large buildings which had been erected either on the site of the old cockpit of Henry VIII, or around it, were converted into lodgings for members of the royal family or favorites of the King, and were commonly referred to as "the Cockpit." Other scholars have assumed that all plays during the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles were given either in the Banqueting House or in the Great Hall. Finally, still other scholars (e.g., Sir Sidney Lee, in Shakespeare's England, 1916) have confused the Cockpit at Whitehall with the Royal Cockpit in St. James's Park. Exactly when the latter was built I have not been able to discover, but it was probably erected near the close of the seventeenth century. It stood at the end of Dartmouth Street, adjacent to Birdcage Walk, but not in the Park itself. John Strype, in his edition of Stow's Survey (1720), bk. vi, p. 64, says of Dartmouth Street: "And here is a very fine Cockpit, called the King's Cockpit, well resorted unto." A picture of the building is given by Strype on page 62, and a still better picture may be found in J.T. Smith's The Antiquities of Westminster. The Royal Cockpit in Dartmouth Street survived until 1816, when it was torn down. Hogarth, in his famous representation of a cock-fight, shows its interior as circular, and as embellished with the royal coat of arms. Another interesting picture of the interior will be found in Ackermann's The Microcosm of London (1808). It is needless to add that this building had nothing whatever to do with the theatre royal of the days of King Charles.