Note 1564 — BOOK IV THE PLAY-HOUSES (continued 4)

On the plays performed there, cf. chh. xii, xiii (Chapel, Paul’s, Oxford’s). Collier appears to have been aware, probably from the Lyly prologues and the reference in Gosson, P. C. 188, of the existence of the earlier Blackfriars play-house, and to have dated it, by a singular coincidence, in 1576. He knew nothing of the real facts, but inferred (H. E. D. P. i. 219) that the undated petition of the Blackfriars inhabitants, which is really of 1596, was of 1576, on the strength of a reference in it to a banishment of the players from the City, which an incorrect endorsement on a Lansdowne MS. (cf. App. D, No. lxxv) had led him to place in 1575. This did not prevent him from also assigning the petition, with a forged reply from the players, to 1596 (cf. p. 508). He proceeded to forge (a) an order dated 23 Dec. 1579 for the toleration of Leicester’s men at the Blackfriars (New Facts, 9), and (b) a memorial by Shakespeare and others as Queen’s men and Blackfriars ‘sharers’ in 1589 (New Facts, 11; cf. Ingleby, 244, 249).