ABSTRACT
After the death of their father in 1597, Cuthbert and Richard Burbage tried to renegotiate a lease on the Theatre in Finsbury Fields. But their efforts led to stalemate. Simultaneously, they leased a piece of land near the Rose Theatre in the Liberty of the Clink, and in December 1598, they took matters into their own hands. During the Christmas holiday, they led a team of sixteen men, including the master carpenter Peter Street and their friend William Smith, with twelve workmen, and tore down the Theatre building their father had built over twenty years earlier. It took them nearly three days to remove what they regarded as their timbers, which they then transported across the Thames to their new site. Here they re-erected the theatre presumably more or less as it had been in Finsbury Fields, though perhaps with some added refinements. And they named it the ‘Globe’.
