[Footnote 489: The Malone Society's _Collections_, I, 265.] [Footnote 490: Wallace, _Three London Theatres_, p. 18.] The name of the playhouse, as in the case of the Rose and the Curtain, was taken from the name of the estate on which it was erected. Of the building we have no pictorial representation; the picture in Kirkman's _The Wits_ (1672), so often reproduced by scholars as "The Interior of the Red Bull," has nothing whatever to do with that building. The Kirkman picture shows a small enclosed room, with a narrow stage illuminated by chandeliers and footlights; the Red Bull, on the contrary, was a large, open-air building, with its stage illuminated by the sun. It is thus described in Wright's _Historia Histrionica_ (1699): "The Globe, Fortune, and Bull were large houses, and lay partly open to the weather."[491] Before its door was displayed a sign on which was painted a red bull; hence the playhouse is sometimes referred to simply as "at the sign of the Red Bull." [Footnote 491: Hazlitt's Dodsley, XV, 408. If the Kirkham picture represents the interior of any playhouse, it more likely represents the Cockpit, which was standing at the time of the Restoration.] The building, as I have indicated, seems to have been completed in or before 1605; but exactly when the Queen's Men moved thither from the Curtain is not clear. The patent issued to the company on April 15, 1609, gives them license to play "within their now usual houses, called the Red Bull in Clerkenwell, and the Curtain in Holywell."[492] Since they would hardly make use of two big public playhouses at the same time, we might suspect that they were then arranging for the transfer. Moreover, Heath, in his _Epigrams_, printed in 1610 but probably written a year or two earlier, refers to the three important public playhouses of the day as the Globe, the Fortune, and the Curtain. Yet, that the Queen's Men were playing regularly at the Red Bull in 1609 is clear from Dekker's _Raven's Almanack_,[493] and they may have been playing there at intervals after 1605. [Footnote 492: The Malone Society's _Collections_, I, 270.] [Footnote 493: Dekker's _Works_ (ed. Grosart), IV, 210-11. I cannot understand why Murray (_English Dramatic Companies_, I, 152-53) and others say that Dekker refers to the Fortune, the Globe, and the Curtain. His puns are clear: "_Fortune_ must favour some ... the _whole world_ must stick to others ... and a third faction must fight like _Bulls_."] Dekker, in the pamphlet just mentioned, predicted "a deadly war" between the Globe, the Fortune, and the Red Bull. And he had good reasons for believing that the Queen's Men could successfully compete with the two other companies, for it numbered among its players some of the best actors of the day. The leader of the troupe was Thomas Greene, now chiefly known for the amusing comedy named, after him, _Greene's Tu Quoque_, but then known to all Londoners as the cleverest comedian since Tarleton and Kempe: