ABSTRACT
In August 1616, Christopher Beeston, manager of Queen Anne’s Men at the Red Bull, acquired the lease of the Royal Cockpit in Drury Lane which was administered by John Best, cockmaster to the now-deceased Henry Condell, Prince of Wales. Beeston had entered the theatrical profession as a boy player with the Lord Chamberlain’s Company, and sometime around 1603 had joined Queen Anne’s Men. In the auditorium the most expensive places were the boxes which abutted the sides of the stage, and the pit, where benches replaced the open air amphitheatre’s yard for standing spectators. The most intriguing member of the group from the point of view was Richard Brome, who had been Ben Jonson’s servant, and was most closely associated with the Salisbury Court Theatre in the 1630s. William Beeston himself, however, was incarcerated for longer, and William Davenant, courtier playwright and, since the death of Jonson, Poet Laureate, was appointed to head the company at the Cockpit.
