ABSTRACT
On 4 February 1596, James Burbage completed the purchase of rooms in the Upper Frater building of the old Blackfriars monastery in the south-west corner of the city of London . He paid £600 and his intention was to convert his new property into an indoors playhouse for the Lord Chamberlain's company whose lease at the Theatre (their regular playhouse in Shoreditch from 1576) was shortly to expire. The conversion was begun but in November inhabitants of the Blackfriars area sent a petition to the Privy Council asking that the project be stopped. They maintained that a playhouse in the precinct would be a general inconvenience and they rehearsed the time-honoured objections that playhouses attracted riff-raff and criminals and were a health hazard in times of plague. Particular to their case, they noted,
the same playhouse is so near the Church that the noise of the drums and trumpets will greatly disturb and hinder both the ministers and parishioners in time of divine service and sermons. 1
(The church was St Anne's and the trumpets and drums were presumably those customarily played outside a playhouse to draw patrons and signal the imminent beginning of a performance.) Then the trump card was played. The petitioners claimed
that there hath not at any time heretofore been used any common playhouse within the same precinct, but that now all players being banished by the Lord Mayor . .. they now think to plant themselves in Liberties .
