All the morning at home putting papers in order; dined at home, and then out to the Red Bull (where I had not been since plays came up again), but coming too soon I went out again and walked up and down the Charterhouse Yard and Aldersgate Street. At last came back again and went in, where I was led by a seaman that knew me, but is here as a servant, up to the tiring-room, where strange the confusion and disorder that there is among them in fitting themselves, especially here, where the clothes are very poor and the actors but common fellows. At last into the pit, where I think there was not above ten more than myself, and not one hundred in the whole house. And the play, which is called _All's Lost by Lust_, poorly done; and with so much disorder, among others, that in the musique-room, the boy that was to sing a song not singing it right, his master fell about his ears and beat him so, that it put the whole house in an uproar. The actors, however, did not remain long at the Red Bull. They built for themselves a new theatre in Drury Lane, whither they moved on April 8, 1663;[517] and after this the old playhouse was deserted. In Davenant's _The Play-House to Be Let_ (1663), I, i, we read: Tell 'em the Red Bull stands empty for fencers:[518] There are no tenants in it but old spiders. [Footnote 517: After November 8, 1660, they acted also in Gibbon's Tennis Court in Clare Market, which they had fitted up as a theatre; see Halliwell-Phillipps, _A Collection of Ancient Documents_, p. 34.] [Footnote 518: See Pepys' _Diary_, April 25, 1664.] CHAPTER XV WHITEFRIARS The district of Whitefriars, lying just outside the city wall to the west, and extending from Fleet Street to the Thames, was once in the possession of the order of White Friars, and the site of an important monastery; but in Elizabeth's time the church had disappeared, most of the ancient buildings had been dismantled, and in their place, as Stow tells us, were "many fair houses builded, lodgings for noblemen and others." Since at the dissolution of the monasteries the property had come into the possession of the Crown, it was not under the jurisdiction of the London Common Council--a fact which made Whitefriars, like Blackfriars, a desirable refuge for players seeking to escape the hostility of the city authorities.[519] One might naturally expect the appearance of playing here at an early date, but the evidence is slight.[520] [Footnote 519: Whitefriars passed under city control in 1608 by grant of King James I, but certain rights remained, notably that of sanctuary. This has been celebrated in Shadwell's play, _The Squire of Alsatia_, and in Scott's romance, _The Fortunes of Nigel_.]