The Reverend Thomas Lorkin writes from London to Sir Thomas Puckering under the date of June 30, 1613: No longer since than yesterday, while Burbage's company were acting at the Globe the play of _Henry VIII_, and there shooting off certain chambers in way of triumph, the fire catched and fastened upon the thatch of the house, and there burned so furiously, as it consumed the whole house, all in less than two hours, the people having enough to do to save themselves.[407] [Footnote 407: Printed in Birch, _The Court and Times of James the First_ (1849), I, 251.] A contemporary ballad[408] gives a vivid and amusing account of the disaster: _A Sonnet upon the Pitiful Burning of the Globe Playhouse in London_ Now sit thee down, Melpomene, Wrapt in a sea-coal robe, And tell the dolefull tragedy That late was played at Globe; For no man that can sing and say Was scared on St. Peter's day. _Oh sorrow, pitiful sorrow, and yet all this is true._[409] All you that please to understand, Come listen to my story; To see Death with his raking brand Mongst such an auditory; Regarding neither Cardinall's might, Nor yet the rugged face of Henry the eight. _Oh sorrow_, etc. This fearful fire began above, A wonder strange and _true_, And to the stage-house did remove, As round as taylor's clew, And burnt down both beam and snagg, And did not spare the silken flagg. _Oh sorrow_, etc. Out run the Knights, out run the lords, And there was great ado; Some lost their hats, and some their swords; Then out run Burbage, too. The reprobates, though drunk on Monday, Prayd for the fool and Henry Condy. _Oh sorrow_, etc. The periwigs and drum-heads fry Like to a butter firkin; A woeful burning did betide To many a good buff jerkin. Then with swolen eyes, like drunken Flemminges Distressed stood old stuttering Heminges. _Oh sorrow_, etc. [Footnote 408: Printed by Haslewood in _The Gentleman's Magazine_ (1816), from an old manuscript volume of poems. Printed also by Halliwell-Phillipps (_Outlines_, I, 310) "from a manuscript of the early part of the seventeenth century of unquestionable authenticity." Perhaps it is the same as the "Doleful Ballad" entered in the Stationers' Register, 1613. I follow Halliwell-Phillipps's text, but omit the last three stanzas.] [Footnote 409: Punning on the title _All is True_.] Ben Jonson, who saw the disaster, left us the following brief account: