ABSTRACT
When I last saw the late Professor F. P. Wilson at his home near Oxford in 1961 he presented me as I was leaving with a bundle of typescript notes and a large photographic print. The typescript was a copy of his own transcript of the Accounts of the Office of Works for the years 1578–1642 annotated with his own MS. comments; the print, measuring 19” × 15”, had been given to F. P. Wilson by Sir Edmund Chambers. At the time I did not spot any link between these two gifts, and I suppose I shall never know whether F. P. Wilson had himself done so. What I am now sure of is that the one explains the other, the Works Accounts providing the vital descriptive evidence needed to identify the plan and elevation of the theatre depicted in the photograph. I duly recorded my thanks for the gift of the transcript under ‘acknowledgements’ in vol. II (pt. 1) of Early English Stages, but saw no reason to do so for the print since it was at once recognizable as that used by Chambers to form the frontispiece to vol. IV of The Elizabethan Stage. It was only when I began to work in earnest on the reasoning behind the design and construction of Elizabethan and Jacobean theatres when preparing part 2 of vol. II of Early English Stages that I began to realize that the descriptive entries in the Works Accounts relating to building activities within the Cockpit playhouse in Whitehall between 1629 and 1632 bore some resemblance to pictorial details represented in the large photographic print which had accompanied F. P. Wilson’s gift of his transcript of the Works Accounts. Inspection of the print showed these resemblances to be strikingly close.
