[Footnote 61: Mr. E.K. Chambers (_The Mediaeval Stage_, I, 383, note 2; II, 190, note 4) calls attention to a "theatre" belonging to the city of Essex as early as 1548. Possibly the Latin document he cites referred to an amphitheatre of some sort near the city which was used for dramatic performances; at any rate "in theatro" does not necessarily imply the existence of a playhouse (cf., for example, _op. cit._, I, 81-82). There is also a reference (quoted by Chambers, _op. cit._, II, 191, note 1, from _Norfolk Archaeology_, XI, 336) to a "game-house" built by the corporation of Yarmouth in 1538 for dramatic performances. What kind of house this was we do not know, but the corporation leased it for other purposes, with the proviso that it should be available "at all such times as any interludes or plays should be ministered or played." Howes, in his continuation of Stow's _Annals_ (1631), p. 1004, declares that before Burbage's time he "neither knew, heard, nor read of any such theatres, set stages, or playhouses as have been purposely built, within man's memory"; and Cuthbert Burbage confidently asserted that his father "was the first builder of playhouses"--an assertion which, I think, cannot well be denied.] The building that he designed and erected he named--as by virtue of priority he had a right to do--"The Theatre." Of the Theatre, unfortunately, we have no pictorial representation, and no formal description, so that our knowledge of its size, shape, and general arrangement must be derived from scattered and miscellaneous sources. That the building was large we may feel sure; the cost of its erection indicates as much. The Fortune, one of the largest and handsomest of the later playhouses, cost only L520, and the Hope, also very large, cost L360. The Theatre, therefore, built at a cost of L700, could not have been small. It is commonly referred to, even so late as 1601, as "the great house called the Theatre," and the author of _Skialetheia_ (1598) applied to it the significant adjective "vast." Burbage, no doubt, had learned from his experience as manager of a troupe the pecuniary advantage of having an auditorium large enough to receive all who might come. Exactly how many people his building could accommodate we cannot say. The Reverend John Stockwood, in 1578, exclaims bitterly: "Will not a filthy play, with the blast of a trumpet, sooner call thither a thousand than an hour's tolling of the bell bring to the sermon a hundred?"[62] And Fleetwood, the City Recorder, in describing a quarrel which took place in 1584 "at Theatre door," states that "near a thousand people" quickly assembled when the quarrel began. [Footnote 62: The rest of his speech indicates that he had the Theatre in mind. The passage, of course, is rhetorical.]