Note 889 — X THE ACTOR'S QUALITY

Platter in 1599 (cf. ch. xvi, introd.) says that plays were given 'alle tag vmb 2 vhren nach mittag'. T. S. Graves, in E. S. xlvii. 66, argues in favour of occasional night performances, and is answered by W. J. Lawrence in E. S. xlviii. 213. Whatever may have been done before 1574 or thereabouts, I find no later evidence which is not to be explained either by private performances or by a loose use of 'night' for the evening hour at which plays terminated in winter. Nor can I go with Lawrence in supposing an exception for Sunday. The Southwark play at 8 p.m. on Sunday, 12 June 1592, cannot have been at a regular theatre, for there was none within the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction. The allusion in Crosse's Vertue's Commonwealth (1603) can quite well be to private plays (cf. App. C), and Henslowe's entry (i. 83) of a loan of 30s. 'when they fyrst played Dido at nyght', on Sunday, 8 Jan. 1598, only suggests to me the payment by Henslowe of the shot for a supper after the first performance. Or it may have been a private performance, for Henslowe does not appear (vide infra) to have opened the Rose on Sundays.