Shakespearean Playhouses: A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the RestorationAdams, Joseph Quincy
History
Shakespearean Playhouses: A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration
Adams, Joseph Quincy
Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Stage history -- To 1625; Theaters -- England -- London -- History
So the said John Brayne made a great sum of money of purpose
and intent to go to the building of the said playhouse, and
thereupon did provide timber and other stuff needful for the
building thereof, and hired carpenters and plasterers for
the same purpose, and paid the workmen continually. So as he
for his part laid out of his own purse and what upon credit
about the same to the sum of L600 or L700 at the least. And
in the same time, seeing the said James Burbage nothing able
either of himself or by his credit to contribute any like
sum towards the building thereof, being then to be finished
or else to be lost that had been bestowed upon it already,
the said Brayne was driven to sell his house he dwelled in
in Bucklersbury, and all his stock that was left, and give
up his trade, yea in the end to pawn and sell both his own
garments and his wife's, and to run in debt to many for
money, to finish the said playhouse, and so to employ
himself only upon that matter, and all whatsoever he could
make, to his utter undoing, for he saieth that in the latter
end of the finishing thereof, the said Brayne and his wife,
the now complainants, were driven to labor in the said work
for saving of some of the charge in place of two laborers,
whereas the said James Burbage went about his own business,
and at sometimes when he did take upon him to do some thing
in the said work, he would be and was allowed a workman's
hire as other the workman there had.[53]
[Footnote 53: Brayne _v._ Burbage, 1592. Printed in full by Wallace,
_op cit._ p. 141.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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