CHAPTER XVIII THE PHOENIX, OR COCKPIT IN DRURY LANE The private playhouse opened in Drury Lane[577] in 1617 seems to have been officially named "The Phoenix"; but to the players and the public alike it was more commonly known as "The Cockpit." This implies some earlier connection of the site or of the building with cock-fighting, from time out of mind a favorite sport in England. Stowe writes in his _Survey_: "Cocks of the game are yet cherished by diverse men for their pleasures, much money being laid on their heads, when they fight in pits, whereof some be costly made for that purpose." These pits, it seems, were circular in shape, and if large enough might well be used for dramatic purposes. Shakespeare, in _Henry V_ (1599), likens his playhouse to a cockpit: Can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt? [Footnote 577: Its exact position in Drury Lane is indicated by an order of the Privy Council, June 8, 1623, concerning the paving of a street at the rear of the theatre: "Whereas the highway leading along the backside of the Cockpit Playhouse near Lincolns Inn Fields, and the street called Queens Street adjoining to the same, are become very foul," etc. (See The Malone Society _Collections_, I, 383. Queens Street may be readily found in Faithorne's _Map of London_.) Malone (_Variorum_, III, 53) states that "it was situated opposite the Castle Tavern." The site is said to be marked by Pit Court.] It is possible, then, that the building was an old cockpit made into a playhouse. Howes,[578] in enumerating the London theatres, says: "Five inns or common hostelries turned into playhouses, one cockpit, St. Paul's singing-school," etc. And Thomas Randolph, in verses prefixed to James Shirley's _Grateful Servant_ (printed in 1630 as it was acted "in the private house in Drury Lane"), suggests the same metamorphosis: When thy intelligence on the Cockpit stage Gives it a soul from her immortal rage, I hear the Muse's birds with full delight Sing where the birds of Mars were wont to fight. [Footnote 578: Stow's _Annals_ (1631), p. 1004.] But in this fantastic conceit Randolph may have been thinking simply of the name of the theatre; possibly he knew nothing of its early history. On the whole it seems more likely that the playhouse was newly erected in 1617 upon the site of an old cockpit. The name "Phoenix" suggests that possibly the old cockpit had been destroyed by fire, and that from its ashes had arisen a new building.[579] Howes describes the Phoenix as being in 1617 "a new playhouse,"[580] and Camden, who is usually accurate in such matters, refers to it in the same year as "nuper erectum."[581]