On July 28, 1597, as a result of the performance of Thomas Nashe's _The Isle of Dogs_, by Pembroke's Men at the Swan,[129] the Privy Council ordered the plucking down of "the Curtain and the Theatre."[130] The order, however, was not carried out, and in October plays were allowed again as before. [Footnote 129: For details see the chapter on the Swan.] [Footnote 130: Dasent, _Acts of the Privy Council_, XXVII, 313.] At this time the Lord Chamberlain's men were at the Curtain, having recently moved thither in consequence of the difficulties Cuthbert Burbage was having with Gyles Alleyn over the Theatre property. During the stay of the Chamberlain's Company, which numbered among its members William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, William Kempe (who had succeeded Tarleton in popular favor as a clown), John Heminges, Thomas Pope, and Augustine Phillips, the playhouse probably attained its greatest distinction. Both Shakespeare and Jonson wrote plays for the troupe; _Romeo and Juliet_, we are told, "won Curtain plaudities," as no doubt did many other of Shakespeare's early masterpieces; and Jonson's _Every Man in His Humour_ created such enthusiasm here on its first performance as to make its author famous.[131] [Footnote 131: Marston, _The Scourge of Villainy_ (1598); Bullen, _The Works of John Marston_, III, 372.] In the summer of 1599 the Chamberlain's Men moved into their splendid new home, the Globe, on the Bankside, and the Curtain thus abandoned fell on hard times. Perhaps it was let occasionally to traveling troupes; in Jeaffreson's _Middlesex County Records_, under the date of March 11, 1600, is a notice of the arrest of one William Haukins "charged with a purse taken at a play at the Curtain." But shortly after, in April, 1600, when Henslowe and Alleyn began to erect their splendid new Fortune Playhouse, they were able to give the impression to Tilney, the Master of the Revels, and to the Privy Council, that the Curtain was to be torn down. Thus in the Council's warrant for the building of the Fortune, dated April 8, 1600, we read that "another house is [to be] pulled down instead of it";[132] and when the Puritans later made vigorous protests against the erection of the Fortune, the Council defended itself by stating that "their Lordships have been informed by Edmund Tilney, Esquire, Her Majesty's servant, and Master of the Revels, that the house now in hand to be built by the said Edward Alleyn is not intended to increase the number of the playhouses, but to be instead of another, namely the Curtain, which is either to be ruined and plucked down, or to be put to some other good use."[133] [Footnote 132: Greg, _Henslowe Papers_, p. 52.] [Footnote 133: The Malone Society's _Collections_, I, 82.]