"
Anyhow, the possibility of this derivation is absolutely excluded by the
fact that the spot on which the second London playhouse was built, for
some unknown reason, bore the name of "Curtayne Close." So the playhouse
was simply named after the spot on which it was built.
As long as The Theatre stood close beside it, the two companies shared
almost the same fate. We have seen that in 1597 an order was issued to
pull down both playhouses; this order, however, was never carried out.
But after the removal of The Theatre to Bankside, The Curtain seems to
have gone its own way. The actors, on the whole, were not afraid of
pleading their cause from the stage, and of retorting on the attacks of
their assailants by lashing them with the whip of caricature, and it
seems that those of The Curtain had gone a little too far in their
Aristophanic parodies of their worthy fellow-citizens and chief
magistrate; for in May, 1601, the justices of the peace for the county
of Middlesex received the following admonition from the privy council:
"We doo understand that certaine players that used to recyte their
playes at the Curtaine in Moorefeilds, do represent upon the stage in
their interludes the persons of some gent of good desert and quality
that are yet alive under obscure manner, but yet in such sorte that all
the hearers may take notice both of the matter and the persons that are
meant thereby.
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