Cuthbert Burbage - Lord Chamberlain's Men

Lord Chamberlain's Men

Cuthbert was also left to execute the more serious matter of finding the Lord Chamberlain's Men a new home after the lease of The Theatre expired. When James died, there were two months left on the 21 year lease he had taken on the land under The Theatre. This lease passed to Cuthbert, who fought to get it renewed by the owner of the land, Giles Alleyn. James Burbage's attempt to bring his company to the Blackfriars Theatre had been stymied by opposition from Blackfriars' wealthy residents; Burbage and company were faced with an imminent crisis.

After a last futile attempt to renew the lease, Burbage took action. He leased Blackfriars to impressario Henry Evans, whose intended use of it for performances by children did not attract opposition. The situation regarding The Theatre was more problematic. The lease, however, gave him the right to use the framing timber of the building, if he did so before the expiration of the lease. When he did not do so, Alleyn announced his intention to use the timber for his own purposes. Looking for a place for his new theatre, Burbage made a verbal agreement with Nicolas Brend for lease on a stretch of land on Maid Lane in Bankside, near Philip Henslowe's Rose Theatre. Burbage hired Peter Streete to take down the old Theatre and to build the new one from as much of the salvaged material as possible. On the night of 28 December 1598, Cuthbert, Richard, a certain William Smith "of Waltham Cross, in the County of Hartford, gentleman", Streete, and twelve others took down The Theatre, carried all the wood and timber across the River Thames and built it again there. This new theatre was renamed the Globe. It opened by September 1599. (The Chamberlain's Men, in the interim, appear to have performed at the Curtain Theatre in Shoreditch).

The Globe provided a stable home for the Chamberlain's Men and its successor, the King's Men, for the next four decades. As significant, Cuthbert and his brother had financed the new venue by making five actors (William Shakespeare, John Heminges, Augustine Phillips, Thomas Pope, and William Kempe) as a group, half-sharers in the profits of the house: this arrangement seems to have solidified the structure of the group, helping cement the position of the Chamberlain's Men as the preeminent troupe in London.