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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.
The order begins as follows: "Her Majestie being informed that there are verie greate disorders committed in the common playhouses both by lewd matters that are handled on the stages, and by resorte and confluence of bad people, hathe given direction that not onlie no playes shall be used within London or about the Citty, or in any public place, during this tyme of sommer, but that all those playhouses that are erected and built only for suche purposes shall be plucked downe, namelie The Curtayne and The Theatre nere to Shorditch, or any other within that county."
In a sermon of 1578 we read the following bitter and deep-drawn sigh by the clergyman John Stockwood: "Wyll not a fylthye playe wyth the blast of a trumpette sooner call thyther a thousande than an houres tolling of a bell bring to the sermon a hundred? nay, even heere in the Citie, without it be at this place and some other certaine ordinarie audience, where shall you finde a reasonable company? whereas, if you resort to the Theatre, The Curtayne, and other places of playes in the Citie, you shall on the Lord's Day have these places, with many other that I cannot reckon, so full as possible they can throng."
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