The playhouse seems to have been ready to receive the players about the end of February, 1617. We know that they were still performing at the Red Bull as late as February 23;[586] but by March 4 they had certainly moved to the Cockpit. [Footnote 586: Wallace, _ibid._, pp. 32, 46. John Smith was delivering silk and other clothes to the Queen Anne's Men at the Red Bull from 1612 until February 23, 1617.] On the latter date, during the performance of a play, the Cockpit was entered by a mob of disorderly persons, who proceeded to demolish the interior. The occasion for the wrecking of the new playhouse was the Shrove Tuesday saturnalia of the London apprentices, who from time immemorial had employed this holiday to pull down houses of ill-fame in the suburbs. That the Cockpit was situated in the neighborhood of such houses cannot be doubted. We may suppose that the mob, fresh from sacking buildings, had crowded into the playhouse in the afternoon, and before the play was over had wrecked that building too. The event created a great stir at the time. William Camden, in his _Annals_, wrote under the date of March 4, 1617: Theatrum ludiorum, nuper erectum in Drury Lane, a furente multitudine diruitur, et apparatus dilaceratur. Howes, in his continuation of Stow's _Annals_, writes: Shrove-Tuesday, the fourth of March, many disordered persons of sundry kinds, amongst whom were very many young boys and lads, that assembled themselves in Lincolnes Inn Field, Finsbury Field, in Ratcliffe, and Stepney Field, where in riotous manner they did beat down the walls and windows of many victualing houses and of all other houses which they suspected to be bawdy houses. And that afternoon they spoiled a new playhouse, and did likewise more hurt in diverse other places.[587] [Footnote 587: _Annals_ (1631), p. 1026.] That several persons were killed, and many injured, is disclosed by a letter from the Privy Council to the Lord Mayor, dated March 5, 1617: It is not unknown unto you what tumultuous outrages were yesterday committed near unto the city of London in diverse places by a rowt of lewd and loose persons, apprentices and others, especially in Lincolns Inn Fields and Drury Lane, where in attempting to pull down a playhouse belonging to the Queen's Majesty's Servants, there were diverse persons slain, and others hurt and wounded, the multitude there assembled being to the number of many thousands, as we are credibly informed.[588] [Footnote 588: The Malone Society's _Collections_, I, 374. Collier, in _The History of English Dramatic Poetry_ (1879), I, 386, prints a long ballad on the event; but he does not give its source, and its genuineness has been questioned. The following year threats to pull down the Fortune, the Red Bull, and the Cockpit led to the setting of special watches. See The Malone Society's _Collections_, I, 377.]