+Love.+ Which I admire at; that the town, much less than at present, could then maintain five companies, and yet now two can hardly subsist. +True.+ Do not wonder, but consider that, though the town was then, perhaps, not much more than half so populous as now, yet then the prices were small (there being no scenes), and better order kept among the company that came; which made very good people think a play an innocent diversion for an idle hour or two, the plays themselves being then, for the most part, more instructive and moral. Whereas, of late, the play-houses are so extremely pestered with vizard-masks and their trade (occasioning continual quarrels and abuses), that many of the more civilised part of the town are uneasy in the company, and shun the theatre as they would a house of scandal. It is an argument of the worth of the plays and actors of the last age, and easily inferred, that they were much beyond ours in this, to consider that they could support themselves merely from their own merit, the weight of the matter, and goodness of the action, without scenes and machines; whereas the present plays, with all that show, can hardly draw an audience, unless there be the additional invitation of a Signer Fedeli, a Monsieur l'Abbé, or some such foreign regale expressed in the bottom of the bill. +Love.+ To waive this digression, I have read of one Edward Alleyn, a man so famed for excellent action, that among Ben Jonson's epigrams I find one directed to him, full of encomium, and concluding thus-- _Wear this renown; 'tis just that who did give So many poets life, by one should live._ Was he one of the Blackfriars? +True.+ Never as I have heard (for he was dead before my time). He was master of a company of his own, for whom he built the Fortune Playhouse from the ground, a large round brick building. This is he that grew so rich, that he purchased a great estate in Surrey and elsewhere; and having no issue, he built and largely endowed Dulwich College in the year 1619[81], for a master, a warden, four fellows, twelve aged poor people, and twelve poor boys, &c. A noble charity! +Love.+ What kind of play-houses had they before the wars? +True.+ The Blackfriars, Cockpit, and Salisbury Court were called private houses, and were very small to what we see now. The Cockpit was standing since the Restoration, and Rhodes's company acted there for some time. +Love.+ I have seen that. +True.+ Then you have seen the other two in effect, for they were all three built almost exactly alike for form and bigness. Here they had pits for the gentry, and acted by candlelight. The Globe, Fortune, and Bull were large houses, and lay partly open to the weather, and there they always acted by daylight.