Among this lengthy list of early London theatres, the Globe is the most entitled to notice, on account of its connection with the great magician of the drama, who not only produced some of his matchless plays here, but made it the scene of his labours as an actor.

The Globe theatre was the fourth and most eminent of the theatres at Bankside: it stood near to the Hope or Beargarden, where the much estimated sports of our forefathers, bear and bull-baiting, were exercised for the amusement of her majesty's † lieges, to the restriction, by an order of her privy council, of the performance of stage-plays and interludes on Thursdays.

Mr. Malone, whose knowledge of the early state of our national drama is not to be questioned, observes, that the period of its erection is doubtful, but thinks it must have been after 1570, as does Howes also, in his continuation of Stowe's Survey, 1631, who says, "before that time he neither knew or read of any such theatres, set-stages, or play-houses as had been built within man's memory." Another writer supposes the date of it may be "confidently fixed within the years 1596-8," on account of the contract for building the Fortune theatre (1599) referring to it as the late erected play-house on the Bankside." But this conjecture certainly makes it too modern; for, not to mention other circumstances, a petition of the queen's players to the lords of the council, in 1582, craving permission to perform in London, states expressly," the season of the year to be past to play at any of the houses with out the city; and that the Globe was one of these houses, must be evident from the condition upon which they obtained their suit, viz. that their number and names should be notified to the justices of Middlesex and Surrey."Now the Globe was most certainly the first play-house erected in Surrey; and its notification to the magistrates of such county, unless it had reference to that

* Of plays, Shakspeare's Pericles. and Romeo and Juliet, were acted at the Globe in 1609, and his Taming of the Shrew in 1623;

other pieces we have met with as performed

here and at Black Friars are, Webster's Duchess of Malfry, 1623; The Picture; and the Emperor of the East, by Massinger, acted 1630 and 1632: Albertus Wallenstein, tr. by Glapthorpe, 1634; Lancashire Witches, com. by Heywood, acted at the Globe, 1634; Challenge for Beauty, tr. com. by ditto, 1636; A Game at Chesse, by Middleton, 1625; and the Lover's Melancholy, by John Ford, acted at the Globe, and at Black Friars, 1629, + Queen Elizabeth,

theatre, would have been needless. Perhaps we shall be near the truth, in fixing the date of its erection between 1570-73.

It was at first a round, spacious building of wood, or, as Stowe more properly terms buildings of that age, 66 a frame of timber," partially roofed with rushes, having an open area. From the top of which a silk flag was displayed, as was usual with all places of public entertainment at that period, to notify that the exhibitions were going on within. The theatre derived its name from its sign, which was a figure of Hercules or Atlas bearing the globe, under which was written this mottoTotus mundus agit histrionem. (All the world acts a play.)

In 1598, the vestry of St. Saviour's parish ordered-" that a petition should be made to the body of the council concerning the play-house in that parish (the Globe), wherein the enormities should be shewed that came thereby to the parish; and that, in respect thereof, they might be dismissed, and put down from playing;" and that four or five of the church wardens should present the same. It does not appear whether this went any further; if the petition itself had been entered in the parish books, we might have had some account of the manner in which the theatre was then conducted.

King James thought better of these amusements; and, on his coming tothe throne in 1603, granted his patent to Shakspeare and others to perform plays, "as well within their usuall house called the Globe in Surrey,' as elsewhere; when the players, who had before been known as the lord chamberlain's servants only, obtained the more imposing title of the king's servants, and continued acting here until it was accidentally burnt on St. Peter's day, June 29, 1613. The particulars of which is thus related by Sir Henry Wootton :

"Now to let matters of state sleep, I will entertain you at the present with what hath happened this week at the Banks side. The king's players had a new play, called All is true, representing some principal pieces of the raign of Henry 8, which was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty, even to the matting of the stage; the knights of the order, with their georges and garter, the guards with their embroidered coats, and the like sufficient in truth within a while to make greatness very familiar, if not

ridiculous. Now, King Henry making a masque at the Cardinal Wolsey's house, and certain canons being shot off at his entry, some of the paper, or other stuff where with one of them did light on the thatch, where being thought at first but an idle smoak, and their eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly, and ran round like a train, consuming within less than an hour the whole house to the very ground.

"This was the fatal period of that vertuous fabrique, wherein yet nothing did perish, but wood and straw, and a few forsaken cloaks; only one man had his breeches set on fire, that would perhaps have broyled him, if he had not, by the benefit of a provident wit, put it out with bottle ale. The rest when we meet."

"And a marvaile and fair grace of God it was," says Sir Ralph Winwood in his memorials," that the people had so little harm, having but two little doors to get out."

Fortunately, however, there were few or no accidents, a circumstance alluded to in an old doleful ballad entered on the stationers' books, of which the subjoined is a copy.

Noe shower his raine did there downe force,

In all that sunn shine weather,
To save that great renowned howse,
Nor thou, ob ale howse! neither:
Had it begunne belowe, sans doubte,
Their wiues for feare had it oute.
O sorrow, &c.

Bee warned, you stage strutters all,
Least you again be catched;
And such a burneing doe befal,
As to them whose bowse was thatched:
Forbear your whoreing breeding biles,
And lay vp that expence for tiles.
Oh sorrow, &c.

Goe drawe you a petition,
And doe you not abhor itt,
And gett with low submission,

A licence to begg for itt:

In churches, sans church-wardens cheeks,
In Surrey and in Middlesex.

Oh sorrow, pittiful sorrow, and yett
All this is true.

The Globe was re-built the following year, and was afterwards possessed by the Blackfriars company, who continued performing there and at Blackfriars alternately, until stopped by the ordinance of parliament in 1648. At the Restoration, the King's and Duke's theatres in Drury-lane and Little Lincoln's Innfields, arose on the ruins of the different minor theatres; after which, if not destroyed, the Globe sunk into oblivion as a play-house.

The resort to the Surrey play-houses,

Globe Playhouse in London.

much employment to the watermen, that in 1613 they petitioned the king that the players might not be permitted to have a play-house in London or Middlesex, or within four miles of the city on that side of the Thames, to the watermen's hindrance; the theatres on the Bankside being so numerous, and the custom of going by water so general, that many hundred watermen were supported thereby.

The Globe, when rebuilt, was a larger and handsomer building than its predecessor, and is termed by the Water poet Taylor, in his epigram on its burning, a "stately theatre."

As gold is better that's in fire tried,

So is the Bankside Globe that late was burn'd;
For where before it had a thatched hide,
Now to a stately theatre 'tis turn'd:

Which shews, that sometimes greatest things are

THE SONG OF THE PIRATE'S

MISTRESS.

For the Olio.

My heart is o'er the sea,

With a far and fearless one,
And it seems as from my lyre of love
The sweetest chord hath gone.

To-night, there will be mask and mirth
Within the lordly ball;

The red wine and the minstrel's song-
A joyous festival.

The laurel wreath-the rose of love,
To crown my harp and me;

I cannot give them smile for smile,
My heart is o'er the sea!

I loved the hues of flowers once,
But now there seems a spell-
In the sunset tints by mermaids traced,
Upon the ocean shell.

The sweet and glistening light of pearls,
Whose trembling lustre seems
As if shower'd from the moon's hright urn,
When she watch'd Endymion's dreams.

Rich sea weeds-like to crimson wreaths
Of fairy fillagree,-

All tell me of the distant waves,
And my beart is o'er the sea!

CHOLERA.

E. S. CRAVEN.

THE following condensed summary, from the Madras Report, and from M. de Jonnes's work, will prove that neither pestilential vapours, nor miasma transported on the wind, nor excess of heat, nor humidity, nor excess or deficiency of electricity, nor, in short, any of those known physical agents which constitute the power of climate, will ac count for the propagation of cholera over the globe.

Heat appears to favour the propagation of cholera. It arose in the torrid zone. It is most deadly in the hot season. It ceases in India, Persia, and Syria, at the approach of winter, and recommences in spring. The conjecture of Moreau de Jonnes, that the spread of cholera, in spite of the severities of a Russian winter, was favoured by the stoves, is not improbable.Clarke mentions in his Travels, that the artificial heat of the stoves in Russia often causes asphyxia; and adds, that numbers are buried alive in this state, owing to the ignorance of the Russian practitioners.

Humidity. It is not the effect of humidity, arising from the evaporation of marshes, rivers, lakes, or seas; although the fact that it first showed itself in the delta of the Ganges might favour that hypothesis. There appears to be no connexion between the malady and hygrometrical state of the atmosphere; for it has ravaged with equal intensity

1

under the equator, where the quantity of rain is eighty inches, and under 60o of latitude, where it is one-fourth less, viz. eighteen inches. It has appeared in Asia, under the tropics, where the annual evaporation is seventy inches, and in Russia, where it is only twenty. It has attacked, with equal intensity, Muscat, situated in the neighbourhood of immense deserts, and entirely deprived of water, except such as is procured from deep wells, and the towns in the alluvial delta of the Ganges. In short, it does not appear to depend on the neighbourhood of lakes, rivers, and marshes, since it has attacked places two hundred leagues from the sea-shore, as Catmandou, and has overrun countries in which there are neither rivers, rivulets, marshes, stagnant waters, nor forests, as the peninsula of Arabia.

Vapour.-Cholera is not caused by a vapour, or an infected portion of the atmosphere, carried along with the winds. Certain winds, at certain seasons, blowing over the Pontine marshes, and carrying a deleterious principle with them, might have suggested this hypothesis. The Arabians and Syrians seeing the healthy and strong suddenly fall down as if struck by the samiel or desert wind, thought cholera depended on a pestilential wind also. If the propagation of the cholera was owing to the diffusion of some deleterious principle by means of currents of air, that principle would be diffused with rapidity, and in the direction of the wind which transported it, and large masses of people would be almost simultaneously attacked, and the population of villages, towns, and districts, would suffer indiscriminately. But the history of the malady proves that it advances, step by step, slowly. It took a year to traverse the peninsula of India; three to pass the Persian Gulf; three to reach the Mediterranean and Caspian Seas.

If it depended for its translation from place to place on the wind, it would not proceed against the wind, and yet the cholera was proceeding in opposite directions at the same time. It departed from the delta of the Ganges, southeast to the Moluccas, and south-west to the Mauritius-to China in the east, and the shores of the Caspian on the west. Such an extended stratum of infected air must speedily have enveloped the whole globe; nevertheless when Aleppo, Antioch, and other towns on the Mediterranean were attacked, the island of Cyprus, only thirty leagues off, es