his ? Church History,? were licensed by the
king ! This interdict was annulled by proclamation
at the Market Cross. In 1601 an English
company, headed by Laurence Fletcher, ?comedian
to his Majestie,? was again in Scotland ; and Mr.
Charles Knight, in his? Life of Shakspere,? con-
THE PALACE GArE. (Affcran EtchinKby -7nmcs Skmr, of Rubiskw.)
niissioner, at his court at Holyrood, and soon after
the theatre in the Tennis Court was in the zenith
of its brief prosperity, in defiance of the city pulpits.
There, on the 15th November, 1681, ?? being the
Queen of Brittain?s birthday,? as Fountainhall
records, while bonfires blazed in the city and
James VI. to England, in 1603, till the arrival of
his grandson the Duke of Albany and York, in
1680, there are doubts if anything like a play was
performed in the Edinburgh of that gloomy period ;
though Sir George Mackenzie mentions that in
June, 1669, ? Thomas Sydserf, having pursued
Mungo Murray for invading him in his Playhouse,
&c., that invasion was not punished as hamesucken,
but with imprisonment ;? and a ?? Playhouse,? kept
at Edinburgh in the same month, when a thousand
prisoners, after Bothwell Bridge, were confined in
the Greyfriars Churchyard, is referred to in the
Acts of Council in 1679.
Some kind of a drama, called ? Marciano, or The
Discovery,? was produced on the festival of St
John by Sir Thonlas Sydserff (the same referred to),
before His Grace the Earl of Rothes, High Comthe
plan of his great Scottish tragedy. According
to the same testimony, the name of Shaklution
; and though a concert was given in 1705
in the Tennis Court, under the patronage of the
Duke of Argyle, and ?? The Spanish Friar ? is said
to have been performed there before the members
of the Union Parliament, no more is heard of it
till 1714, when ?? Macbeth ? was played at the
Tennis Court, in presence of a brilliant array of
Scottish nobles and noblesse, after an archery
meeting. On this occasion many present called
for the song, ?The king shall enjoy his own
again,? while others opposed the demand ; where-
-Jpon swords were resorted to, and-as an anticipation
of the battle of Dunblane-a regular m2Zk
ensued.
A little to the north-eastward of the Tennis
Court stands the singularly picturesque, but squat
little corbelled tower called Queen Mary?s Bath,
?( Mithridates, King of Pontus,? wherein the future
Queen Anne and the ladies of honour were the
