That high prices of admission to the little theatre were charged we learn from a marginal note in _Pappe with an Hatchet_ (1589), which states that if a tragedy "be showed at Paul's, it will cost you four pence; at the Theatre two pence."[167] The Children, indeed, catered to a very select public. Persons who went thither were gentle by birth and by behavior as well; and playwrights, we are told, could always feel sure there of the "calm attention of a choice audience."[168] Lyly, in the Prologue to _Midas_, acted at Paul's in 1589, says: "Only this doth encourage us, that presenting our studies before _Gentlemen_, though they receive an inward dislike, we shall not be hissed with an open disgrace." Things were quite otherwise in the public theatres of Shoreditch and the Bankside. [Footnote 162: Murray, _English Dramatic Companies_, I, 325, erroneously says: "Their public place was, probably, from the first, the courtyard of St. Paul's Cathedral."] [Footnote 163: Wallace, _Shakespeare and his London Associates_, p. 95.] [Footnote 164: That is, in or near Pater Noster Row.] [Footnote 165: _Annales, or A Generall Chronicle of England_, 1631, signature liii 1, verso.] [Footnote 166: F.G. Fleay, _A Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama_, II, 76; W.J. Lawrence, _The Elizabethan Playhouse_, p. 17.] [Footnote 167: R.W. Bond, _The Complete Works of John Lyly_, III, 408. Higher prices of admission were charged to all the private playhouses.] [Footnote 168: John Marston, _Antonio's Revenge_, acted at Paul's in 1600.] Under the direction of their master, Sebastian Westcott, the Boys acted before the public at least as early as 1578,[169] for in December of that year the Privy Council ordered the Lord Mayor to permit them to "exercise plays" within the city;[170] and Stephen Gosson, in his _Plays Confuted_, written soon afterwards, mentions _Cupid and Psyche_ as having been recently "plaid at Paules." [Footnote 169: There is a record of a play by the Paul's Boys in 1527 before ambassadors from France, dealing with the heretic Luther; but exactly when they began to give public performances for money we do not know.] [Footnote 170: Malone, _Variorum_, III, 432.] Westcott died in 1582, and was succeeded by Thomas Gyles. Shortly after this we find the Children of Paul's acting publicly with the Children of the Chapel Royal at the little theatre in Blackfriars. For them John Lyly wrote his two earliest plays, _Campaspe_ and _Sapho and Phao_, as the title-pages clearly state. But their stay at Blackfriars was short. When in 1584 Sir William More closed up the theatre there, they fell back upon their singing-school as the place for their public performances.