Note 107 — BOOK III THE COMPANIES

Cf. ch. xvii (Blackfriars). The bare fact of this early use of the Blackfriars has, of course, long been known from the reference to comedies at the Blackfriars in Gosson, P. C. 188 (App. C, No. xxx), and the prologues to Lyly’s Campaspe and Sapho and Phao. Fleay, 36, 39, 40, guessed that the early Blackfriars performances were at an inn, and by the Paul’s boys, and that the euphuistic prose plays at the Bel Savage mentioned by Gosson, S. A. 39 (App. C, No. xxii), in 1579 were early Chapel versions of Lyly’s above-named plays. But there is no evidence that either of the boy companies ever used an inn.