As Elizabethan England’s first purpose-built playhouse, the Theatre could take that name without fear of confusion with other London playhouses. To Elizabethans, the word theatre had a wider and richer connotation than has come down to us today. The owner and
builder of the Theatre, James Burbage, must have been aware of this. The decision to name his building the Theatre was bold, perhaps even provocative.
The word theatre comes into English from the Latin theātrum. The Latin word comes in turn from the Greek θέᾱτρον, meaning a place for viewing (OED theatre, n.1). The Greek noun is related to the verb θεᾶσθαι, to behold, and also to θέαsight, view and θεατής spectator (OED theatre, n.1). The English word theatre has been in the lexicon since the Middle Age (first recorded use c. 1374 in Chaucer’s translation of De Consolatione Philosophiae) (OED theatre, n.1). It retains the sense of looking, viewing, and spectatorship, although in current
usage its meaning is restricted to the performing arts and the physical buildings
in which they are performed. At the time the Theatre was constructed, the Latin theātrum was used to mean not only a physical space and the action performed in that space,
but also much more generally, indicating something worthy of display and to be looked
at.
Though it was the first permanent Elizabethan theatre, the Theatre was not the first theatre to be built in England. The ruins of twenty Roman amphitheatres have been found scattered throughout Britain
by modern archeologists, including one at London. The amphitheatres were used to stage spectacle (Wilmot): gladiator fights, beast fights, and criminal executions. Of particular interest
is the Roman theatre at Verulamium. It is the only known example of a Roman theatre
in Britain with a thrust stage rather than an arena. This which indicates that theatrical
performances were staged there, although the building could still have been used for
fights (both animal and gladiatorial) as well (Roman Theatre of Verulamium).
An artist’s impression of the Verulamium theatre, based on the excavated groundplan,
is strikingly similar to conjectural reconstructions of Elizabethan playhouses.1 Similarly, we know that several London playhouses also served two functions, being used both for theatrical performances
and for bear-bating. There is no evidence, however, that the Theatre had such a dual purpose.
By the end of the fourth century AD the Verulamium theatre was no longer in use as
a venue for the performing arts (it actually became the town’s rubbish site) (Kenyon). The amphitheatres also fell into ruin after the Roman withdrawal from Britain.
There is no evidence, or records of any kind, for any amphitheatres surviving to the
Elizabethan period. We thus have no way of knowing whether Burbage and his contemporaries would have been aware of their former existence. However,
the Elizabethans were devoted to the Greek and Roman classics. Even if they were not
aware that Britain had had its own amphitheatres, knowledge of the Roman theatres,
their appearance and function probably survived.
Burbage may have wished to evoke the classical Roman tradition of theatre, both in the Theatre’s almost circular shape (clearly comparable to the Roman amphitheatres) and in its
name. As Andrew Gurr has put it: His choice of a Roman name and the circular design suggests that he may have had grandiose
ambitions to provide London with a copy of one of Rome’s great inventions. Its name
affirms that it was not just another converted innyard (Gurr). But if Burbage hoped that this would lend an aura of respectability to his theatre and the performance
of plays in it, he was to be disappointed. The Puritans, following the wake of early
church fathers such as Tertullian and Augustine, continued to condemn the practice of theatre going and performance as occasions
of gambling, drunkenness, prostitution and general moral degradation.
The word theātrum is of course closely associated with the phrase theātrum mundi (theatre of the world), a concept which is especially associated with the Renaissance and the Baroque style.
The concept is most familiar to us today as Shakespeare expresses it in As You Like It:
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts, Gap in transcription. Reason: (EB)[…]
But the concept of theātrum mundi was by no means limited to the stage and a literal theatre. Several book roughly
contemporary with the Theatre contain the word theātrum in their titles:
Theatrum Vitae Humanum, c. 1565 (early encyclopedia)
A Theatre for Worldlings, 1569 (religious treatise)
Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1570 (considered to be the first modern atlas)
Gynaeceum, sive Theatrum mulierum, 1586 (encyclopedia of women’s national dress)
Theatrum de veneficis, 1586 (treatise on black magic)
Theatrum Mundi, et Temporis, 1588 (maps of star constellations)
Theatrum artis scribendi, 1594 (treatise on handwriting)
The frontispieces of these and other Elizabethan books are highly detailed and richly
symbolic. Several include representations of the physical world, and many contain
some reference to the theatre, including, famously, Ben Jonson’s 1616 folio frontispiece image.
Ben Jonson’s 1616 folio Works title page. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Almost all incorporate a physical structure of some kind—usually a stone arch or monument.
This last is important, because the purpose of frontispieces was not merely to provide
decoration. Instead they were designed to epitomise the book and glorify its author and his work (Corbett and Lightbrown). Burbage may have intended the Theatre to be his monument, a physical testimony to his life and work, more impressive and
imposing than a mere page in a book.
Throughout the sixteenth century the royal Habsburgs compiled miscellaneous objects
of value or beauty—jewellry, artifacts, curiosities, relics, paintings, objects from
the natural world, carvings and sculptures—and housed them in collections known as
Kunstkammern. One of the most important of these collections was that of Ferdinand II of Tyrol (1529-1595), whose Kunst-und Wunderkammer (chamber of art and natural wonders) was a reflection of the cosmos and thus of contemporary knowledge about the world (Haag). Kunstkammern and similar collections were described by Samuel Quiccheberg in his 1565Inscriptiones vel tituli theatri amplissimi2 as theātri mundi, theatre[s] conceived in the broadest possible terms, containing genuine materials
and accurate reproductions of the whole universe (qtd. in Friehs).
Kunstkammern first appeared in England as cabinets of curiosities around the turn of the sixteenth century—slightly later than their European counterparts.
The earliest significant English collection is the Tradescant collection, first referred
to in 1634. By this time the collection was already encyclopaedic (The Tradescant Collection), so Tradescant must have been collecting for some time. Consequently, even though
the first record of the collection comes considerably later than the construction
of the Theatre, it seems not unreasonable to assume that the idea of Kunstkammern as theātri mundi filtered back to England much earlier.3Burbage may well have had this in mind when naming the Theatre.
In the Renaissance period, the idea of a theātrum, or theatre, extended far beyond a physical space. The underlying concept of a theātrum was to present and showcase the universe in manageable form for study and spectatorship.
Whether in the pages of a book or in a Kunstkammern, the aim was to present in a small space Gap in transcription. Reason: (EB)[…] an all embracing image of the world (Haag). We still think of the theatre as doing this: for many, one of the purposes of the
theatre is how life is reflected in art. For the Elizabethan playgoers, the image
of heaven, earth and the cosmos was incorporated into the physical structure of the
theatre building. We know that the underside of the tiring-house roof in several of
the playhouses was painted to represent the heavens, including depictions of the sun,
moon, stars and the signs of the zodiac. The stage represented earth and the hollow
area beneath it hell. Thus the whole cosmos was represented in the physical structure
of the stage (Stern). There is unfortunately no surviving evidence of how the Theatre’s stage looked, but also no reason to assume that it varied greatly from this basic
model.4
Unfortunately very little is known about the building and the structure of the playhouses
in early modern London and the story is no different for the Theatre, the first purpose-built playhouse. The limited information we have on the Theatre comes from two main sources: the lawsuits and the plays performed there (Egan). Even with these documents the accuracy of our knowledge of the Theatre’s structure and its features cannot be confirmed. It was first believed that an image
of the Curtain, was in fact an image of the Theatre; this information was then later corrected.5 Most famously, the Theatre was torn down from its site in Shoreditch and taken to Bankside were it was erected as the Globe. This suggests two things about the Theatre: (1) the basic structure of the Globe was similar if not exactly the same to that of the Theatre, and (2) that the Theatre was designed to be easily dismantled. We also know from legal documentation that
there is no mention of stonemasons at any time during its erection, maintenance or
deconstruction and the records supply no mention of thatchers suggesting that the
Theatrewas essentially a wooden structure with brick foundations and a tiled roof (Mabillard).
It was first suggested that builders of the time followed a plan to build playhouses
making them all the same, however in later years this has been corrected. Each structure
was built with needs of the plays and the players in mind. According to Gurr, the
first amphitheatres, built in 1567 and 1576, were simpler structures than the later amphitheatres in the shapes of both the stage
and the auditorium. Each amphitheatre seems to have been quite distinct from the others (Gurr). The Theatre was described as a vast, polygonal, three story timber structure, open to sun and rain (Mabillard). We can make an educated guess at the Theatre being a very grandiose structure with reports it cost up to £700 and descriptions
of it recalling it to be decadent and sumptuous (Egan).
Some specifics of the structure can be gathered legal documentation. These include
the audience structure, the method of construction, the payment system and the surrounding
buildings on the property. Details of new lease negotiations in 1590s between Giles Allen and Cuthbert Burbage seem to suggest the pair discussed turning the Theatre into tenement flats. This leads us to believe that while the seating in the galleries
was raked, (we assume) they were added to a flat floor after construction rather than
having been incorporated into the buildings structure. This would indicate that the
builders adopted a floor-on-floor method in construction.6
In 1585, a new lease was unsuccessfully negotiated by Allen and Burbage. The surviving unsigned draft suggests that parts of, if not most of the gallery
space was subdivided into rooms. The lease gave Allen and his wife and family the right to:
Enter or come into the premises & their in some one of the vpper romes to have such
convenient place to sett or stande to se such playes as shalbe ther played freely
wthout and thinge therefore payeinge soe that the sayde Gyles hys wife and familie doe come & take ther places before they shalbe taken vpp by
any others. (qtd. in Egan)
Whilst we accept there was no standard method of construction for the playhouses we
do know that the Swan, the Hope, and the Fortune had subdivided rooms because of their surviving construction contracts.
Much like other playhouses of the time it is suggested that the Theatre worked on a penny-by-penny system in which you pay a penny for every time you cross
through a gate to a new viewing position, therefore making the best seats the most
expensive. This was first described by William Lambarde: first pay one penny at the gate, another at the entry of the scaffold, and a third
for a quiet standing (Lambarde). A small section of documentation remains saying how Allen, together with Margaret Brayne and her supporter Robert Miles, went to the Theatre vppon A played aye to stand at the do that goeth vppe to the gallaries of the said
Theatre to take & receive for the vse of the said Margarett half the money that shuld be given to come vppe into the said gallaries at that do. Egan seems to suggest that there was only one set of stairs that took patrons to
the galleries and that this conflicts with Lambarde’s suggestion that access was after you entered the yard and paid your first penny
(Egan).
Records show that the building contained £40 of ironmongery. This has then started
a scholarly debate as to how the building was actually held together since it was
possible to dismantle it in just a few days over Christmas. Berry suggests that the
timbers were held together by metalwork rather than with fitted joints, mortises,
tenons and dowels as usual (Berry). Although, on the other hand, it was thought to be a marvellous feat of conventional carpentry, prefabricated off-site and delivered as
a kit set of parts (Orrell).
An archaeological dig in 2010 by the Museum of London saw the discovery of black glazed
red ware pottery in a form that is traditionally associated with brewing and beer
drinking. The project managers suggest that the later Bankside theatres such as The Globe and The Rose were known to have dedicated tap houses for their catering needs and that it is not inconceivable that our brew house served as a pragmatic re-use of an existing
build for the prototype tap house (Braybrooke)
It is not possible to confirm the accuracy of the drawings or renderings created to
give an impression of the Theatre but one has been created as a result of collaboration between Cloak and Dagger Studios
and the Museum of London (The Theatre, Shoreditch 1595). Archaeological investigations into what really stood there in 1577 continue to this day.
Playhouses were believed by some to encourage vice and sin, contributing to the corruption
of youth and threatening public order.7 The ability of players to build and maintain playhouses was seen by one commentator
as an euident token of a wicked time.8 Playing was often restricted during Lent9 (Chambers 273, 278), during any divine service (Chambers 268) and on Sundays.10 Playhouses were associated with riots, public disturbances, and dangerous accidents,
including one (probably apocryphal) rumour of an accident involving a firearm (possibly
at the Theatre) in 1587 that resulted in the death of a pregnant woman and child (Gurr 265). Other recorded incidents include a violent quarrel involving an apprentice (Chambers 297), a great disorder that required the presence of the under Sheriff of Middlesex,11 and an indictment of John Brayne and James Burbage for allowing the illicit assembly of people, great affrays, reviling, tumult and near insurrections,
and divers other malefactions and enormities and causing subversion of good order and government, and also to the peril of the lives of divers
good subjects of the said lady Queen.12 Not everyone seemed to think that playhouses were likely to cause disquiet in the
streets of London, however; in the minutes of a meeting of the City Court of Aldermen, there is noted
a petition to allow such playes, enterludes, commedies & tradgedies as maye tende to represse vyce & extoll
vertwe, for the recreation of the people, & therby to drawe them from sundrye worser
exercyses (Chambers 269).
Playhouses were also consistently viewed as a threat to public health, as large gatherings
of people posed a plague risk (Chambers 276, 278, 281). Very soon after the Theatre was opened, the Privy Council ordered that playing be restricted until Michaelmas be past at the least in order to avoid the sickness likely to happen through the heat of the weather and assemblies of the
people of London to plays.13 In 1584 a document outlining the rules for playing in London ordered the prohibition of playing when plague deaths exceeded 50 in a week.14
The lifetime appointment of the Master of the Revels was first created during Henry VIII’s reign to organise the various theatrical entertainments that took place at court (Dutton 32). The Master came under the jurisdiction of the Lord Chamberlain’s office and his
authority eventually expanded to cover companies of boy actors and the rest of the
country (Dutton 32, 33). It is believed that the office primarily existed to safeguard against threats to
the authority of the royal court and to stifle criticisms levelled against it and
other important institutions (Dutton 3).
The Master was eventually granted powers to review plays before performance (previously
held by the Privy Council and the Bishop of London), overriding any civic authority, possibly to the consternation of the Lord Mayor
of London (Dutton 19, 21, 32). Queen Elizabeth I issued a proclamation in 155915 which, though it made few practical changes to the licencing regime, suggested a
desire for tighter royal control over the process (Dutton 22). Later, a royal patent allowing the Earl of Leicester’s Men to perform in any part of the realm was issued, on the proviso that the said Commedies, Tragedies, enterludes, and stage playes be by the master of oure Revells
for the tyme beynge before sene and allowed (Chambers 87). The patent of commission for Edmund Tilney when he took up the position of Master allowed him to to order and reforme, auctorise and put downe [such plays], as shalbe thought meete
or vnmeete,16 formally granting him powers of censorship and centralising control over players
within the Revels office (Gurr 93).
Dutton considers that this was not primarily intended to be a censorship regime (though
it certainly functioned as one), but rather a way of protecting actors, playwrights
and their theatres from interference by other institutions (Dutton 32). The Master’s task was to determine whether a given play was fit to be performed
before the Queen—a label that was likely to render said play fairly immune to other
forms of control (Dutton 32). There is evidence to suggest that the Master would judge not just the content of
the play, but the quality of the players (Dutton 34). He could also essentially give notes on plays, suggesting changes to be made to
ensure that it was fit for performance (Dutton 34-35).
Theatre as a commercial enterprise was dependent on (and acted to reinforce) the patronage
system, with the companies using the theatres requiring aristocratic protection to
avoid too much interference from the Privy Council and local authorities (Dutton 32; Gurr 39). Patents from noble patrons helped travelling companies to get licences to play17 and their influence was used to get around local regulations on playing, such as
an attempt by Burbage in 1594 to use the patronage of the Lord Admiral to convince the lord mayor of London to allow them to use the Cross Keys Inn during winter (Gurr 146). Local authorities were not always so easily swayed by powerful names, however,
as an increasingly confrontational series of letters between the Earl of Warwick and
the lord mayor of London about the reception of Earl of Warwick’s Men in the City is testament. The mayor urged that the company obteine lawefully to playe at the Theater or any other open place out of the Citie, being not vpon the Sondaye (Chambers 291). Players were officially employed as household servaunts and daylie wayters to their patrons, in order that they continue to have their protection when travelling
(Chambers 268). Gurr suggests that the companies were used by their patrons to further their own
prestige and power and to project a sense of superiority over their rivals at court
(Gurr 40).
The Theatre was built in Shoreditch in the Liberty of Holywell (or Halliwell). Liberties were areas of land in which the rights traditionally reserved to the
monarch had devolved into private hands, which meant that Holywell fell outside the jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor of London and his officers (Dutton 31). The Theatre may have been located near a boundary, as a scuffle involving Burbage seems to have crossed into another area of jurisdiction (Dutton 31). Building theatres in areas beyond City jurisdiction appears to have been a trend,
for obvious reasons (Dutton 31).
The opening of the Theatre was publically opposed by the City fathers, who—though they had no authority to intervene
officially—instigated a pamphleting campaign against playing and playhouses after
the Theatre opened for business in 1577 (Archer; Gurr 43). Commentators referred to the Theatre as a sumptuous18 and gorgeous19painted stage,20 a spectacle and school for all wickedness and vice to be learned in,21no better then houses of baudrie.22 The campaign continued until the Queen put her stamp of approval on playing in 1583 (Gurr 43).
Despite their lack of jurisdiction, the lord mayor of London and other city officials continued to try and restrict playing anywhere near London,23 including in Shoreditch, bemoaning in letters to officials, council meetings and proclamations the superfluous sort of men of the playhouses and that the exercise of those playes is a great hindraunce of the seruice of God.24 Playing at the theatre was seen to be inconuenient and dangerous, causing a perill of infection and danger of disorders,25 gathering great multitudes of the basist sort of people.26 Occasionally, the Privy Council agreed to step in and ban playing and other unlawfull or forbidden pastymes for short periods of time.27
The general campaign of puritan commentators against the Theatre and theatre in general (along with all other forms of entertainment such as bear-baiting
and fencing), was energised by the Martin Marprelate controversy (Gurr 45; Chambers 202). The controversy arose around 1588 when satirical pamphlets written by one or more people under the pseudonym Martin began to be published and circulated, attacking the Church of England (Dutton 74). The pamphleteers were pursued by authorities with vigour, not only because of the
level of criticism of the Anglican Church and its leaders, but also because they were
acting without the necessary licences (Dutton 74).
An anti-Martinist, John Lyly eagerly defended the Church (as did other playwrights such as Nashe—all with proper authorisation and possibly official encouragement) and suggested
in his writings that a representation of Martin found its way on the London stage, writing: Woould it not bee a fine Tragedie Gap in transcription. Reason: (CM)[…] that he that seekes to pull downe those that are set in authoritie above him, should
be hoysted upon a tree above all other (Dutton 74, 75). The reluctance of Edmund Tilney, Master of the Revels of the time, to allow anti-Martinist plays to be performed,
despite the fact that they were on the same page with the government, was likely due
to a desire to remove all such dangerous topics of Divinytie and of State from the public stage and public discourse in general (Dutton 75-76).
The Marprelate controversy is believed to have touched the Theatre directly, with one of the plays possibly being staged both at Paul’s by a boy company and at the Theatre: Lyly writes that to see it in Shoreditch would have cost two pence while it would have been four pence at Paul’s (Dutton 76). Lyly’s rather thorough knowledge of these plays led to speculation that he himself was
involved in writing them, with one commentator remarked that Lylyhath not played the Vice master of Paules and the Foolemaster of the Theatre for naughtes (Dutton 76). Nashe writes that Martin was wormed and lanced upon the stage at the Theatre and that he took very grievously to made a May game.28
As a result of the controversy, the Master of the Revels was directed by the Privy
Council to form a Commission of Censorship with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the
Lord Mayor of London, with authority to review all plays in and about the Cyttie of London (Dutton 77) and stryke oute or reforme suche partes and matters as they shall fynd unfytt and undecent
to be handled in playes, bothe for Divinitie and the State.29 Anyone disobeying the rulings of this Commission would be not onely sevearley punished but made [in]capable of the exercise of their profession
forever hereafter (Dutton 77). The Commission, however, is never heard from, or about, again, with no evidence
that it affected the Master’s office in any way, except to act as a little legitimising
boost (Dutton 78).
The Admiral’s Men at the Rose and the Chamberlain’s Men at the Theatre began with the decision by two Privy Councillors in 1594 to only grant licences to play to two companies at any given time (Gurr 56). The two companies were only allowed to play at their named playhouses, which cleverly
circumvented any clash between the Privy Council and the Lord Mayor’s office, as both
theatres were situated outside of City limits (Gurr 57). Though the companies attempted to get around the restriction from playing in indoor
spaces, the arrangement resulted in six years of relatively stable theatre and may
have quite substantially affected the plays and theatre practices themselves (Gurr 57).
There was one intrusion into the duopoly by the Earl of Pembroke’s Men in 1597, which arranged to play at the Swan despite the Privy Council’s decrees (Gurr 59). The Council responded, at the request of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London (Dutton 107)30 (interestingly, the Master of the Revels appears not to have been involved ), with
a ban on all playing in July 1597, plus a quite drastic order to pull down all the playhouses, including specific mention
of the Curtayne and the Theatre near to Shoreditch (Dutton 108; Dutton).31 This directive appears to have been ignored and may have been a slightly over-stated
restraining order for the summer months, as the Privy Council was unlikely to so blithely
order the destruction of private property, though there is little evidence to support
this hypothesis (Gurr 59; Dutton 108). It was not the first time the Mayor had sought the destruction of the playhouses
to no effect (Chambers 283). Playing at the Theatre and the Rose was relicensed in October and the Earl of Pembroke’s Men’s fate was sealed after the Isle of Dogs controversy (Gurr 59).
The Theatre’s part in the golden duopoly came to an end when the company’s lease on the land
expired in 1597, a situation unlikely to have been helped by the property’s staunchly anti-theatre
landlord, though its timbers were reconstituted into the Globe two years later (Gurr 61, 63).
This table is the result of logical inference, in light of the conditions of extant
information detailed in the report that follows. The plays with asterisks have direct
evidence or are alluded to in connection with the Theatre. All listings prior to the duopoly of 1594 are necessarily speculative. The table reflects Andrew Gurr’s repertory studies as
well as the collated titles in Alfred Harbage’s Annals and E. K. Chambers’ Elizabethan Stage. The approximate dates for the first performances of plays at the Theatre are listed. Plays first performed in 1598 may actually have been staged at the Curtain rather than the Theatre, because the Chamberlain’s Men moved there before 8 September 1598.
After the Theatre’s construction in 1576, playwrights needed to cater to audience demands for novelty. Companies that previously
travelled across the countryside started playing in the suburbs every day of the week
and needed a fresh play every day (Gurr 21). Thirty-five playing companies have been recorded in the years immediately following
1576. In 1578, John Stockwood spoke of eighte ordinarie places of playing around London, suggesting that eight of these companies played in the London area at any given moment during this period (qtd. in Ingram 240). Ingram conservatively guesses that each company played for only four days each
week and nine months in the year, calculating over twelve hundred performances annually.
This would have required at least one hundred different play-texts every year (Ingram 240-241). The number of plays written between 1560 and 1642 was probably at least three times the thousand or so titles that survive and at least
six times the number of surviving texts (Gurr 27). The Privy Council order of 1 August 1577 evidences the first certain date for the Theatre in action (Wickham, Berry, and Ingram). On 24 August 1578, Stockwood sermonised:
What should I speake of beastlye Playes Gap in transcription. Reason: (AB)[…] haue we not houses of purpose built with great charges for the maintenance of them
Gap in transcription. Reason: (AB)[…] [?] I know not how I might with the godly learned especially more discommende the
gorgeous Playing place erected in the fieldes, than to terme it, as they please to
haue it called, a Theatre, that is, euen after the maner of the olde heathenish Theatre at Rome. (qtd. in Egan 8)
This is one of the earliest examples of evidence that links the content of the plays
to the physical structure of the building itself.
Direct evidence for performances of plays at the Theatre before 1594 is rare. Most of what we know about the operation of the Theatre is derived either from a set of legal documents dating from the late 1580s and early 1590s or from allusions in other texts. In 1579, Stephen Gosson wrote that his own plays, The Blacksmith’s Daughter and Catiline’s Conspiracies, were usually brought in at the Theater (Wickham, Berry, and Ingram). In 1582, Gosson tells us that The Play of Plays and Pastimes and The Fabii (The Four Sons of Fabius) played at the Theatre, mentioning Caesar and Pompey and his own Captain Mario as well (qtd. in Chambers 394). Anthony Munday tells us of the performance of Calistus at the Theatre, wherein the bawdresse Scelestina inflamed the maiden Melibeia with her sorceries (qtd. in Chambers 209). On 22 February 1582, Richard Madoxwent to the Theatre to see a scurvy play set out all by one virgin, where there proved a freemartin43 without voice, so that we stayed not the matter44 (Wickham, Berry, and Ingram 67). This has been recorded in the Annals of English Drama as A Virgin Play (Harbage, Schoenbaum, and Stoler Wagonheim 50). While it is highly unlikely that a woman would have appeared on stage before the
Restoration, Wickham, Berry, and Ingram deem this one of the very rare indications that a woman might appear on a regular, professional
stage in London at this time (Wickham, Berry, and Ingram 343). Audience members sometimes neglect to mention the title of a play. In Martins Months Minde (1589), Thomas Nashe notes a play that cursedly handledMartin Marprelate at the Theatre, but records nothing else about it (Wickham, Berry, and Ingram 357). Most of these early plays are lost. Other documents called plots have survived which inform us of the number of regular actors, hired men and boys,
the distribution of roles, and stage properties (Bevington 104). From such fragmentary documents and obscure allusions we can make claims about
make-up and costumes such as the black-face employed in The Battle of Alcazar45 or the pale visage and black clothing of the ghost in [Ur]-Hamlet.46 Most of our evidence for play-titles comes from Philip Henslowe’s Diary.47 No similar records for any company or playhouse survive, and parish and town records
do not in most instances name the plays they performed. Even Henslowe’s accounts give little description beyond titles of plays and the finances involved.
One way of deducing which plays were staged at the Theatre is to examine the repertories of companies that performed there. Unfortunately, evidence
on the activities of various London companies in the earlier years is sparse, and these companies had not yet developed
settled practices in playhouse use (Gurr 21). Sir Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, obtained a patent in 1574 which gave his company’s leader, James Burbage, the confidence to build the Theatre (Gurr 21). So we might assume that the Earl of Leicester’s Men were the main occupants of the Theatre in its early stages. However, we do not know if Burbage saw his building as a home for his company or as a separate business venture. He
gave up Leicester’s livery when he became impresario at the Theatre, taking on Henry Carey’s instead. Burbage was connected to his former company, but he also leased his new space to other groups
(Gurr 189). The Admiral’s Men with the famous Edward Alleyn performed Christopher Marlowe’s early plays at the Theatre until 1591 (Gurr 88). Stories of the Queen’s Men in the 1580s, mostly anecdotes about Richard Tarlton, indicate that they played at the Theatre.48 There is mention of Earl of Warwick’s Men49 (later Oxford’s) companies as well (Wickham, Berry, and Ingram 332).50 Gurr suggests that the Earl of Leicester’s Men may have joined Lord Strange’s Men after Leicester died in 1588, and that they played at Theatre until 1591 (Gurr 259). The new Earl of Pembroke’s Men of 1591 were likely occupants of the Theatre until 1594 when some members joined the Chamberlain’s Men. The new Earl of Pembroke’s Men was possibly the result of a quarrel between James Burbage and Edward Alleyn in May 1591. Alleyn and the Lord Strange’s Men left the Theatre for the Rose in 1592. This left Burbage with a vacancy. Gurr suggests that he may well have arranged to form a new company by applying to Pembroke to sponsor them (Gurr 267). This is important because when actors moved from one company to the next, they
sometimes brought their plays with them.
It is not until the duopoly arrangement of 1594 that we can be certain of the Theatre’s sole occupants—the Chamberlain’s Men. According to Egan, from this date we can infer that, a new play written for the Chamberlain’s Men would have been first performed at the Theatre, and that the dramatist writing it would most likely know that (Egan 99). Shakespeare, as part of the Chamberlain’s Men, would have taken the architecture of the Theatre into account. As Stern observes, A fixed prop, the playhouse itself dictated and circumscribed imaginative space for
Shakespeare’s audience and it prescribed the imaginative world of Shakespeare himself too (Stern 101). While it was usual practice for play texts to belong to companies, we know from
Henslowe’s records that some texts stayed with the playhouse. It is tempting to assume that
Burbage bought play texts specifically for his theatre in the same vein as Henslowe. However, the lack of standardisation in theatrical practices of the time prevents
us from asserting this.
The Theatre was a venue for performance, but it is by no means clear that these were limited
to plays. The visual performances of jugglers, jesters, acrobats, rope-dancers, bear-wards
and fencers are lost when we privilege the written words of extant play-scripts. Richard Tarlton of the Queen’s Men was not only a clown, but a Master of Fencing (Nungezer). Sword fighting was displayed at the Theatre on 25 August 1578 and periodically afterwards (Wickham, Berry, and Ingram 340). Some evidence remains of William Kempe’s applauded merryments recorded on the title page of A Knack to Know a Knave and we know of his singing talents from the script of the jig Singing Simpkin. Originally a German form, jigs were skits of musical comedy, usually domestic and
farcical. Simpkin, for example, hides himself in a chest in order to cuckold an old man and trick a
soldier who is trying to seduce the same woman. Kempe’s jigs were a prominent feature of the Chamberlain’s Men’s repertory during 1590s, so Kempe probably performed them at the Theatre until its close in 1598.
Gurr observes that [m]ost of the evidence about the repertory that James Burbage planted in his playhouses through the 1570s suggested that it had little new to offer at first (Gurr 143-144). The real changes in material from moralistic or romance plays like Sir Cylomon and Clamydes51 to powerful plays such as The Spanish Tragedy (1587) occurred as part of a delayed response to the new reality of fixed staging. Only
in the suburbs, away from the surveillance of the city and only with the advent of
captive audiences who had gathered and paid exclusively to experience a play could players take more
risks (Gurr 143-144).
Plays took place in the middle of the day, taking approximately three hours including
the two hours traffic of the stage and the musical numbers that accompanied each performance (Gurr 38). While we have no evidence for Sir Philip Sidney attending such outdoor theatres, his Apology for Poetry (written c. 1582 and printed 1595) presents an aristocratic and academic objection to the kind of stage realism and
clowning that would have taken place at the Theatre. His condemnation of dragons breathing fire and smoke, small numbers of swordsmen
representing armies, doggerel rhyming, the misuse of classical unities, and mongrel tragi-comedy paints a negative picture of public theatre (Gurr 130-131).52 Playwrights for the Theatre generally ignored criticisms like Sidney’s because their business of playing catered to popular taste. The audiences of the
Theatre were rowdy and physical in their responses. This lead Gosson to complain in 1596, that in publike Theatres, when any notable shew passeth over the stage, the people arise
in their seats and stand upright with delight and eagernesse to view it well (Gurr 52). John Lyly’s plea in the prologue to Sappho and Phao (c. 1584) also suggests that the Theatre audiences were noisy (Gurr 52). In the daylight of the Theatre, the audiences were always visible, creating a metatheatrical, self-conscious awareness
that required a willing suspension of disbelief.
Between 1587 and 1594, writers created large plays demanding greater sizes in casts. The 2,220 lines of Clyomon and Clamydes reflect the growth of the standard company from five in the 1520s, to the large plays which exceeded the eleven men and four boys playing Tamburlaine. Even with doubling of lesser parts, plays like The Wounds of Civil War, Edward III, Henry VI, Parts 1-3, Titus Andronicus, Richard III, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, and The Taming of the Shrew required up to twenty-four players, more than before or after this period. After
Lord Chamberlain set up the duopoly in 1594 however, casts generally stuck to little more than eleven men and four boys (Gurr 146). From 1587, the Theatre staged plays that mirrored international politics. No indoor theatre could provide
the space for the drums and sword play required to transpose the emotional immediacy
of militarism and hostility between England and Spain (Gurr 161). Current affairs became increasingly apparent on the stage with docu-drama style
plays like Arden of Faversham. Neither the stage provenance, nor the authorship of this play is known (Gurr 172). However, the Chamberlain’s Men staged a similar play at Theatre called A Warning for Fair Women. Both plays are based on a wife-murder from Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles.
Acting styles also seem to have evolved over this period. It was at the Theatre that Londoners witnessed the formation of personation. This term, coming into use in the 1590s, signalled the player pretending to be a real human being rather than an abstract
concept, as well as stage heroes with whom the audience could personally identify.
Tamburlaine, Hieronimo, and Faustus exemplify this phenomenon (Gurr 166). Tamburlaine launched a fashion Thomas Nashe condemned as the swelling bombast of a bragging blanke verse (Gurr 166). The influence of Marlowe’s blood-and-thunder play can be seen in Alphonsus of Aragon, The Battle of Alcazar, and Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. Gurr suggests these plays as likely candidates for the Theatre, based on style (Gurr 167).
From 1594 to the last days of the Theatre we can study the repertory of the Chamberlain’s Men more directly, noting too the gradual divergence between the types of plays at the
Theatre and those at the Rose. This must however be to some extent a conjectural comparison as little of the repertory
survives. The Rose repertory is much wider, with over eighty extant play titles compared to the fifteen
or so that survive from Shakespeare’s company. Some generalisations may nonetheless be made. At first both theatres staged
popular plays based on the Robin Hood stories like John a Kent and John a Cumber. After 1594, the Theatre staged mostly English histories and love comedies. Towards the end of the Theatre’s life-span the Chamberlain’s Men adopted Ben Jonson with his humours comedies—a trend started at the Rose (Gurr 177). The appearance of Jonson at the Theatre was the direct result of his murdering Henslowe’s player, Gabriel Spencer. Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour initiated the practice of railing at the theatre. Railing is a unique form of satire which, according to Gurr, became the chief and most conspicuous alternative to the naïve illusionism of the
heroics of Marlowe and the citizen repertory (Gurr 185). While the Admiral’s Men at the Rose indulged in citizen comedy, Shakespeare only approached it distantly in his Merry Wives of Windsor. Both companies may have staged the citizen comedy Fair Em.53Shakespeare’s company gained a reputation for its plays about love, appealing to Inns of Court students. Marston’s character Luscus kept common-place books of Shakespeare’s verse, quoting Romeo when expedient. By contrast, Henslowe’s playwrights did not attempt to follow this romantic trend. The Rose was in some ways more conservative than the Theatre. At the Theatre, Shakespeare dared to uphold the power of love over parental authority in plays like Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and even The Taming of the Shrew (Gurr 180).
The Chamberlain’s Men were at the Theatre when the Privy Council ordered the closure of London playhouses (specifically) the Theatre and Curtain in the summer of 1597. They were most likely also there in the autumn of 1597, when all the playhouses reopened. They moved to the Curtain for the autumn season of 1598, leaving the Theatreunfrequented. Evidence for this is found in John Marston’s Scourge of Villainy, where the satirist states that the Chamberlain’s Men in Romeo and Juliet received Curtain plaudities.Edward Guilpin also comments on this in his Skialetheia (1598):
Because we have no illustrations of the Theatre, play-texts play a major part in modern conceptions of the Theatre space. One can make positive suggestions by observing that Romeo and Juliet and the Merchant of Venice require an upper level for their balcony scenes. Egan argues that we can rule out
features such as a floor-level stage trap, pillars, or a stage cover for the heavens as none of Marlowe’s plays required them (Egan 6). He also observes that although the 1592 edition of Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy has a scene that suggests a stage post as a stake for tying a prisoner to, it was
probably a property stake. However, we should not assume that Marlowe and Kyd had the Theatre in mind at the time of writing. Even if a play does not require a structural feature,
it may still exist. Robert Greene’s stage directions suggest the need for a heavens. His Comical History of Alphonsus, King of Aragon has an opening stage direction that reads: Let Venus be let down from the top of the stage, and at the end: Exit Venus. Or if you can conveniently, let a chair come down from the top of the stage, and
draw her up. Even so, Greene allows for the possibility that she may enter and exit on foot. A similarly ambiguous
stage direction in the 1599 edition of Greene’s A Looking Glass for London refers to a throne which appears to be set downe over the Stage, but Wickham, Berry, and Ingram claim that set downe over here means placed upon (Wickham, Berry, and Ingram 12). Using stage directions as records is problematic because we do not know whether
they were written for players or readers (Gurr and Ichikawa 44). A stage direction written for a specific scene may have been written precisely
because of its unconventional nature. Because the plays that suggest pillars or a
heaven date to after the building of the Rose, Egan suggests that there was no use for a turret or house. Nevertheless, he is careful to remind us that absence of evidence is not evidence
of absence (Egan 7).
Using play-texts as evidence is dangerous because of the function of the printed texts
that survive. In the 1570s, plays began to be censored and licensed for performance by the Master of the Revels.
At this time the prompt copy or playhouse manuscript became important as it carried his signature allowing its
performance. Town mayors demanded to see this before they agreed to anything being
staged under their authority. These manuscripts thus contained the fullest text that
the company could legally perform. They could cut it, but not add to it. Such manuscripts,
like the one which provided the long folio of Hamlet, provided the maximum content (Gurr and Ichikawa 23). Yet, how often this maximum was realised on stage is uncertain. Playwrights usually
gave up all rights to their play manuscripts when they sold them to playing companies
(Gurr and Ichikawa 20). The same caution applied to analysing theatrical practices must be used when interpreting
the play-texts themselves. Individual instances should not be assumed to prove a general
practice.
The little surviving evidence for performances at the Theatre indicates that it was a loud and colourful place. The Shoreditch amphitheatre allowed for experimentation in vulgar tastes that appealed to the people. For this, the Theatre was heavily criticised. Such criticism has left us vital clues as to the nature and
existence of plays and other performances at the theatre. Audiences expected to see
large casts, swordfights, musical numbers, visual performances and jigs. They echoed
the bombastic delivery of actors like Edward Alleyn, Richard Burbage, and William Kempe with laughter and cheer. The Theatre housed an eclectic assortment of genres which Shakespeare made use of, staging plays that transgressed societal and academic norms.
For information about the Theatre, a modern map marking the site where the it once stood, and a walking tour that will
take you to the site, visit the Shakespearean London Theatres (ShaLT) article on the Theatre.
Notes
It is possible that the artist (Alan Sorrell) may have (unconsciously) overlaid what
we know of London playhouses onto his impression of the Verulamium theatre. What has been excavated
of the theatre, however, supports Sorrell’s envisaging of it. (EB)↑
A modern translation is available under the title The First Treatise on Museums. (EB)↑
Haag says that the Archduke’s collection was already a major attraction for interested princes and men-of-letters from all
over Europe during [his] lifetime (Haag). (EB)↑
The idea of the theatre building as a representation of the universe is present in
the naming of both incarnations of Burbage’s theatre—the 1577Theatre and 1599Globe. (EB)↑
The image was first identified as being the Curtain by Leslie Hotson in 1954 but was then re-labelled as the Theatre in Shoreditch by Sidney Fisher in 1964. Fisher’s identification then stood for thirty-seven years
until it was re-evaluated by Herbert Berry who confirmed that Leslie Hotson was correct
and the image was indeed the Curtain. (TP)↑
Floor-on-floor would require one wall to rise in a single plane while the others had
jetties so that each storey overhung the one below. (TP)↑
It is also great corruption of youth with vnchast and wicked matters, occasion of
muche incontinence, practises of many ffrayes, querrells, and other disorders and
inconueiniences, letter from the Lord Mayor to the Lord Chancellor (qtd. in Chambers 279). (CM)↑
It is an euident token of a wicked time when plaiers wexe so riche that they can build
suche houses, written after the building of the Theatre and the Curtain (qtd. in Chambers 269). (CM)↑
The Lord Mayor advised that players obteine lawefully to playe at the Theater or any other open place out of the Citie, being not vpon the Sondaye (qtd. in Chambers 291). (CM)↑
Where it happened on Sunday last that some great disorder was committed at the Theatre, I [the Lord Mayor writing to the Lord Chancellor] sent for the under sheriff of
Middlesex to understand the circumstances, to the intent that by myself or by him I might have
caused such redress to be had as in duty and discretion I might, and, therefore, did
also send for the players to have appeared afore me, and the rather because those
plays do make assemblies of citizens and their families of whom I have charge,10 April 1580 (qtd. in Wickham, Berry, and Ingram 342). (CM)↑
The juries on behalf of our lady the Queen present that John BrayneGap in transcription. Reason: (CM)[…] and James BurbageGap in transcription. Reason: (CM)[…] on 21 FebruaryGap in transcription. Reason: (CM)[…] and divers other days and times before and after, congregated and maintained illicit
assemblies of people to hear and see certain Gap in transcription. Reason: (CM)[…] plays or interludes put into effect and practised by the same John Brayne and James Burbage and divers other persons unknown at a certain place called the Theatre in HolywellGap in transcription. Reason: (CM)[…] On account of which illicit assembly of people, great affrays, reviling, tumult and
near insurrections, and divers other malefactions and enormities were then and there
made and perpetrated by a great many ill-disposed people in a great disturbance of
the peace of our lady the Queen, and also subversion of good order and government,
and also to the peril of the lives of divers good subjects of the said lady Queen
being in the same place, and also contrary to the peace of the same lady Queen and
likewise the form of the statute for that purpose decreed and provided, etc.,21 February 1580 (qtd. in Wickham, Berry, and Ingram 341). (CM)↑
The privy council ordered that: A letter [be sent] to the Lord Wentworth, Master of
the Rolls, and Mr Lieutenant of the Tower, signifying unto them that for the avoiding of the sickness likely to happen through
the heat of the weather and assemblies of the people of London to plays, her highness’s pleasure is that as the Lord Mayor hath taken order within
the City, so they immediately Gap in transcription. Reason: (CM)[…] shall take order with such as are and do use to play Gap in transcription. Reason: (CM)[…] within that county [Middlesex] Gap in transcription. Reason: (CM)[…] as the Theatre and such like, shall forbear any more to play until Michaelmas be past at the least,1 August 1577 (qtd. in Wickham, Berry, and Ingram 336). (CM)↑
That they play not openly till the whole death in London haue ben by xx daies under 50 a weke, nor longer than it shal so continue, Corporation of LondonRules for Playing, as a response to a petition by the Queen’s Men to allow them a stable environment for playing, 1584 (qtd. in Chambers 298). (CM)↑
The Quenes Maiestie doth straightly forbyd all maner interludes to be playde eyther
openly or priuately, except for the same be notified before hande and Licenced within
any Citie or towne corporate, by the Maior or other chiefe officers of the same, and
within any shyre, by suche as shalbe Lieutenauntes for the Quenes Maiestie in the
same shyre, or by two of the Justices of peax inhabyting within that part of the shire
where any shalbe played, Proclamation 509, 1559 (qtd. in Chambers 263). (CM)↑
[A]ucthorise and commaunde our said Servant Edmunde Tinley Maister of our said Revells Gap in transcription. Reason: (CM)[…] to warne commaunde and appointe in all places within this our Realme of England, aswell as within francheses and liberties as without, all and eury plaier or plaiers
with their playmakers, either belonginge to any noble man or otherwise Gap in transcription. Reason: (CM)[…] to appeare before him with all suche plaies Gap in transcription. Reason: (CM)[…] and them to presente and recite before our said Servant or his sufficient deputie
Gap in transcription. Reason: (CM)[…] to order and reforme, auctorise and put downe, as shalbe thought meete or vnmeete, Patent of Commission for Edmund Tilney, Master of the Revels, 1581 (qtd. in Chambers 285). (CM)↑
Where my servauntes, bringers hereof unto you, be suche as ar plaiers of interludes;
And for the same have the Licence of diverse of my Lords here, under the seales and
handis, to plaie in diverse shieres within the realme under there aucthorities, as
maie amplie appeare unto your L. by the same licence Gap in transcription. Reason: (CM)[…] that they maie have your hand and seale to ther licence for the like libertye in
Yorke shire; being honest men,Lord Robert Dudley to the Earl of Shrewsbury (qtd. in Chambers 264). (CM)↑
The Theatre, the Curtain and other places of plays in the City Gap in transcription. Reason: (CM)[…] The gorgeous playing place erected in the [Finsbury Fields], Gap in transcription. Reason: (CM)[…] as they please to have called it, a Theatre,Stockwood, from his A Sermon at Paul’s Cross (qtd. in Wickham, Berry, and Ingram 339). (CM)↑
A spectacle and school for all wickedness and vice to be learned in Gap in transcription. Reason: (CM)[…] [are] those places Gap in transcription. Reason: (CM)[…] which are made up and builded for such plays and interludes, as the Theatre and Curtain is and other such like places,Northbrooke, 2 December 1577 (qtd. in Wickham, Berry, and Ingram 337). (CM)↑
Would to god these comon plaies were exiled for altogether, as semenaries of impiety,
& their theaters pulled downe, as no better then houses of baudrie. It is an euident
token of a wicked time when plaiers wexe so riche that they can build suche houses,William Harrison, written probably after the building of the Theatre and the Curtain (qtd. in Chambers 269). (CM)↑
Attempt by the Lord Mayor to order a prohibition on building playhouses within this Cyttye, or the lybertyes and suburbes of the same and that any existing playhouses be pulled downe & defaced,1581 (qtd. in Chambers 283). (CM)↑
[T]he players of playes, which are vsed at the Theatre, and other such places, and tumbleres and such like are very superfluous sort of
men, and of suche facultie as the lawes haue disalowed, and their exercise of those
playes is a great hindraunce of the seruice of God Gap in transcription. Reason: (CM)[…] It is also great corruption of youth with vnchast and wicked matters, occasion of
muche incontinence, practises of many ffrayes, querrells, and other disorders and
inconueiniences, letter from the Lord Mayor to the Lord Chancellor, 1580 (qtd. in Chambers 279). (CM)↑
Ther ar certain fencers that haue set vp billes and meane to play a prise at the Theatre on Tuesday next, which is May eue. How manie waies the same maie be inconuenient
and dangerous, specially in that they desire to passe with pomp the cities, yowe can
consider, namelie the statute against men of that facultie, the perill of infection,
the danger of disorders at such assemblies, Lord Mayor to a Justice of Middlesex (qtd. in Chambers 293). (CM)↑
Among other we finde one very great and dangerous inconuenience, the assemblie of
people to playes, beare bayting, fencers and prophane spectacles at the Theatre and Curtaine and other like places, to which doe resorte great multitudes of the basist sort of
people, Lord Mayor to Sir Francis Walsingham, asking him to deal to the liberties, beyond his control, 1583 (qtd. in Chambers 294). (CM)↑
Moreover for avoidinge of their unlawfull assemblies in those quarters, yt is thoughte
meete you shall take order that there be noe playes used in anye place neere thereaboutes,
as the Theator, Curtayne, or other usuall places where the same are commonly used, nor no other sorte of unlawfull
or forbidden pastymes that drawe together the baser sorte of people, from hence forth
untill the feast of St. Michaell, Privy Council, 1592 (qtd. in Chambers 310). (CM)↑
Martin Gap in transcription. Reason: (CM)[…] being Gap in transcription. Reason: (CM)[…] sundry ways very cursedly handled, as Gap in transcription. Reason: (CM)[…] wormed and lanced, that he took very grievously to be made a May game upon the stage,Nashe, 1589 (qtd. in Wickham, Berry, and Ingram 357). (CM)↑
[A]uthoytie hereof to delyver unto them their bookes, that they maye consider of the
matters of their comedyes and tragedyes, and thereupon to stryke oute or reforme suche
partes and matters as they shall fynd unfytt and undecent to be handled in playes,
bothe for Divinitie and the State, comaunding the said companies of players in her
Majesties name, that they forbeare to present and playe publickly anie comedy or tragedy
other then suche as they three shall have seene and allowed, Privy Council, 1589 (qtd. in Chambers 306). (CM)↑
[W]e are now again most humble and earnest suitors to your Honours to direct your
letters as well to ourselves as to the Justices of Peace of Surrey and Middlesex for the present stay, and final suppressing, of the said Stage Plays, as well at
the Theatre, Curtain and Bankside as in all other places in and about the City. Whereby we doubt not but, the opportunity
and the very cause of many disorders being taken away, we shall be more able to keep
the worse sort of such evil and disordered people in better order than heretofore
we have been, Court of Common Council at Guildhall writes to the Privy Council, 1597 (qtd. in Wickham, Berry, and Ingram 107) (CM)↑
Her Majesty being informed that there are very great disorders committed in the common
playhouses, both by lewd matters that are handled on the stafes and by resort and
confluence of bad people, hath given direcition that not only no plays shall be used
within London or about the City, or in any public place during this time of summer, but that also
those playouses that are erected and built only for such purposes shall be plucked
down—namely the Curtain, and the Theatre near Shoreditch, or any other within that County, Privy Council order to the magistrates in Middlesex and Surrey, 1597 (qtd. in Wickham, Berry, and Ingram 100) (CM)↑
Possibly same as Calisto and Melebea, 1527? or Celestina, 1598? (AB)↑
Also known as The Wise Man of West Chester. It was taken to the Rose after 1594. Its success prompted Philip Henslowe to ask Anthony Munday to write more Robin Hood inspired plays for his playhouse. (AB)↑
This is the testimony of an anonymous speaker. (AB)↑
Plots provided a skeleton of the play through entrances and exits. The Admiral’s Men’s plot for The Battle of Alcazar gives the following description: The Battell of Alcazar, fought in Barbarie, between Sebastian king of Portugall, and
Abdelmelec king of Marocco (qtd. in Chambers 459-460). This may be the same play as the lost Muly Mulloco as Abdelemec also went by this name in productions by the Lord Strange’s Men. (AB)↑
In Wits Misery (1596), Thomas Lodge described the son of Beelzebub and his wife as walking for the most part in black under colour of gravity, and looks as pale as the vizard
of the ghost which cried so miserably at the Theatre, like an oyseter wife, Hamlet, revenge (Wickham, Berry, and Ingram 367). (AB)↑
The Four Sons of Fabius was likely performed at the Theatre in early 1580 by Earl of Warwick’s Men as they had performed it at court that same year. The Dutton brothers of the Earl of Warwick’s Men became the leaders of Oxford’s men in 1580. This is recorded in the preface to a squib (satirical writing): The Duttons and theyr fellow-players forsakyng the Erie of Warwycke theyr mayster,
becames followers of the Erie of Oxford, and wrot themselves his COMOEDIANS, which
certayne Gentlemen altered and made CAMOELIANS (qtd. in Chambers 98-99). (AB)↑
While Chambers suggests that Lyly may have written for the Theatre, he is more likely to have written for the elite audiences of the court and indoor
theatres. The Oxford Boys performed Lyly’s plays (see Chambers 395). (AB)↑
This play and other romances which formerly toured internationally were the staple
of the amphitheatre playhouses at first. The following description is from Thomas Creede’s 1599 quarto: The Historie of the two valiant Knights, Syr Clyomon knight of the Golden Sheeld, sonne to the King of Denmarke: And Clamydes the White Knight, sonne to the King of Suauia. As it hath been sundry times Acted
by her Maiesties Players (qtd. in Chambers 6). (AB)↑
The tragical comedie of Calistus played at the theatre in 1580. (AB)↑
The quarto of Richard III provides evidence for its revival as does an entry in the diary of John Mannigham. Knutson cites this evidence as making possible the revival of Fair Em by the Chamberlain’s Men in 1594-1595 (see Sorlien 75). (AB)↑
References
Citation
Archer, Ian.The City of London and the Theatre.The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theatre. Ed. Richard Dutton. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011. Print.
Corbett, Margery, and Ronald Lightbrown. The Comely Frontispiece: The Emblematic Title Page in England, 1550-1660. Boston: Routledge and Paul, 1979. Print,
Dutton, Richard. The Court, the Master of the Revels, and the Players.The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theatre. Ed. Richard Dutton. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011. Print.
Egan, Gabriel. The Theatre in Shoreditch 1576-1599.The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theatre Ed. Richard Dutton. 2012. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199697861.013.0011.
Lambarde, William. A perambulation of Kent: Containing the description, historie and customs of that
shire: written in the yerre 1570. Chatham, 1826. Remediated by Internet Archive.
Nungezer, Edwin. A Dictionary of Actors: and Other Persons Associated with the Public Representation
of Plays in England before 1642. New Haven: Yale UP, 1929. Print.
Stern, Tiffany. This Wide and Universal Theatre: The Theatre As Prop in Shakespeare’s Metadrama.Shakespeare’s Theatres and the Effects of Performance. Ed. Farah Karim-Cooper and Tiffany Stern. London: Arden Shakespeare, 2013. 11-32. Print.
Bloomfield, Eleanor, Tayla Pitt, Caitlin Merriman, Anya Banerjee, and Kate LeBere. The Theatre.The Map of Early Modern London, Edition 7.0, edited by Janelle Jenstad, U of Victoria, 05 May 2022, mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/THEA2.htm. Draft.
Chicago citation
Bloomfield, Eleanor, Tayla Pitt, Caitlin Merriman, Anya Banerjee, and Kate LeBere. The Theatre.The Map of Early Modern London, Edition 7.0. Ed. Janelle Jenstad. Victoria: University of Victoria. Accessed May 05, 2022. mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/THEA2.htm. Draft.
APA citation
Bloomfield, E., Pitt, T., Merriman, C., Banerjee, A., & LeBere, K. 2022. The Theatre. In J. Jenstad (Ed), The Map of Early Modern London (Edition 7.0). Victoria: University of Victoria. Retrieved from https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/editions/7.0/THEA2.htm. Draft.
RIS file (for RefMan, RefWorks, EndNote etc.)
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<surname>Jenstad</surname></name></editor>, <publisher>U of Victoria</publisher>,
<date when="2022-05-05">05 May 2022</date>, <ref target="https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/THEA2.htm">mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/THEA2.htm</ref>.
Draft.</bibl>
Project Manager, 2020-2021. Assistant Project Manager, 2019-2020. Research Assistant,
2018-2020. Kate LeBere completed her BA (Hons.) in History and English at the University
of Victoria in 2020. She published papers in The Corvette (2018), The Albatross (2019), and PLVS VLTRA (2020) and presented at the English Undergraduate Conference (2019), Qualicum History
Conference (2020), and the Digital Humanities Summer Institute’s Project Management
in the Humanities Conference (2021). While her primary research focus was sixteenth
and seventeenth century England, she completed her honours thesis on Soviet ballet
during the Russian Cultural Revolution. During her time at MoEML, Kate made significant
contributions to the 1598 and 1633 editions of Stow’s Survey of London, old-spelling anthology of mayoral shows, and old-spelling library texts. She authored
the MoEML’s first Project Management Manual and quickstart guidelines for new employees and helped standardize the Personography and Bibliography.
She is currently a student at the University of British Columbia’s iSchool, working
on her masters in library and information science.
Programmer, 2018-present. Junior Programmer, 2015-2017. Research Assistant, 2014-2017.
Joey Takeda was a graduate student at the University of British Columbia in the Department
of English (Science and Technology research stream). He completed his BA honours in
English
(with a minor in Women’s Studies) at the University of Victoria in 2016. His primary
research interests included diasporic and indigenous Canadian and American literature,
critical theory, cultural studies, and the digital humanities.
Joey Takeda authored or edited the following items in MoEML’s bibliography:
Jenstad, Janelle and Joseph Takeda. Making the RA Matter: Pedagogy, Interface, and Practices.Making Things and Drawing Boundaries: Experiments in the Digital Humanities. Ed. Jentery Sayers. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2018. Print.
Research Assistant, 2017-2019. Chase Templet was a graduate student at the University
of Victoria in the Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS) stream. He was specifically
focused on early modern repertory studies and non-Shakespearean early modern drama,
particularly the works of Thomas Middleton.
Data Manager, 2015-2016. Research Assistant, 2013-2015. Tye completed his undergraduate
honours degree in English at the University of Victoria in 2015.
Director of Pedagogy and Outreach, 2015–2020. Associate Project Director, 2015.
Assistant Project Director, 2013-2014. MoEML Research Fellow, 2013. Kim McLean-Fiander
comes
to The Map of Early Modern London from the Cultures of Knowledge
digital humanities project at the University of
Oxford, where she was the editor of Early Modern Letters Online, an open-access union
catalogue and editorial interface for correspondence from the sixteenth to eighteenth
centuries. She is currently Co-Director of a sister project to EMLO called Women’s Early Modern Letters Online (WEMLO). In the past, she held an internship with the
curator of manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare
Library, completed a doctorate at Oxford on
paratext and early modern women writers, and worked a number of years for the Bodleian Libraries and as a freelance editor.
She has a passion for rare books and manuscripts as social and material artifacts,
and is
interested in the development of digital resources that will improve access to these
materials while ensuring their ongoing preservation and conservation. An avid traveler,
Kim
has always loved both London and maps, and so is particularly delighted to be able
to bring
her early modern scholarly expertise to bear on the MoEML project.
Janelle Jenstad is Associate Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director
of The Map of Early Modern London, and PI of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. She has taught at Queen’s University, the Summer
Academy at the Stratford Festival, the University of Windsor, and the University of
Victoria. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media (Routledge). She has prepared a documentary edition of John Stow’s A
Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If
You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Renaissance and
Reformation,Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies,
Early Modern Literary Studies, Elizabethan
Theatre, Shakespeare Bulletin: A Journal of Performance
Criticism, and The Silver Society Journal. Her book
chapters have appeared (or will appear) in Institutional Culture in Early
Modern Society (Brill, 2004), Shakespeare, Language and the Stage,
The Fifth Wall: Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism, Performance and Theatre
Studies (Arden/Thomson Learning, 2005), Approaches to Teaching
Othello (Modern Language Association, 2005), Performing Maternity
in Early Modern England (Ashgate, 2007), New Directions in the
Geohumanities: Art, Text, and History at the Edge of Place (Routledge, 2011), Early
Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter, 2016), Teaching Early Modern
English Literature from the Archives (MLA, 2015), Placing Names:
Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana, 2016), Making
Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota, 2017), and Rethinking
Shakespeare’s Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies
(Routledge, 2018).
Janelle Jenstad authored or edited the following items in MoEML’s bibliography:
Jenstad, Janelle and Joseph Takeda. Making the RA Matter: Pedagogy, Interface, and Practices.Making Things and Drawing Boundaries: Experiments in the Digital Humanities. Ed. Jentery Sayers. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2018. Print.
Jenstad, Janelle. Building a Gazetteer for Early Modern London, 1550-1650.Placing Names. Ed. Merrick Lex Berman, Ruth
Mostern, and Humphrey Southall. Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 2016. 129-145.
Jenstad, Janelle. The
Burse and the Merchant’s Purse: Coin, Credit, and the Nation in Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody.The
Elizabethan Theatre XV. Ed. C.E. McGee and A.L.
Magnusson. Toronto: P.D. Meany, 2002. 181–202.
Print.
Jenstad, Janelle. The City Cannot Hold You: Social Conversion in the Goldsmith’s
Shop.Early Modern Literary Studies 8.2 (2002): 5.1–26..
Jenstad, Janelle. The Gouldesmythes Storehowse: Early Evidence for
Specialisation.The Silver Society Journal 10 (1998): 40–43.
Jenstad, Janelle. Lying-in Like a Countess: The Lisle Letters, the Cecil
Family, and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside.Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 34 (2004): 373–403. doi:10.1215/10829636–34–2–373.
Jenstad, Janelle. Public
Glory, Private Gilt: The Goldsmiths’ Company and the Spectacle of Punishment.Institutional Culture in Early Modern Society. Ed.
Anne Goldgar and Robert Frost. Leiden: Brill, 2004. 191–217. Print.
Jenstad, Janelle. Smock
Secrets: Birth and Women’s Mysteries on the Early Modern Stage.Performing Maternity in Early Modern England. Ed. Katherine
Moncrief and Kathryn McPherson. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. 87–99. Print.
Jenstad, Janelle. Using
Early Modern Maps in Literary Studies: Views and Caveats from London.GeoHumanities: Art, History, Text at the Edge of Place. Ed.
Michael Dear, James Ketchum, Sarah
Luria, and Doug Richardson. London: Routledge, 2011. Print.
Stow, John. A SVRVAY OF
LONDON. Contayning the Originall, Antiquity, Increase, Moderne estate, and description
of that Citie, written in the yeare 1598. by Iohn Stow Citizen of London. Also an
Apologie (or defence) against the opinion of some men, concerning that Citie, the
greatnesse thereof. With an Appendix, containing in Latine, Libellum de situ &
nobilitate Londini: written by William Fitzstephen, in the raigne of Henry the
second. Ed. Janelle Jenstad and
the MoEML Team. MoEML. Transcribed.
Programmer at the University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre (HCMC).
Martin ported the MOL project from its original PHP incarnation to a pure eXist database
implementation in the fall of 2011. Since then, he has been lead programmer on the
project
and has also been responsible for maintaining the project schemas. He was a co-applicant
on
MoEML’s 2012 SSHRC Insight Grant.
Tom Bishop is a MoEML Pedagogical Partner. He is Professor of English at the University of Auckland, New Zealand,
where he teaches in the English and Drama programmes. He is the author of Shakespeare and the Theatre of Wonder (Cambridge, 1996), the translator of Ovid’s
Amores (Carcanet, 2003), and a general editor of The Shakespearean International Yearbook, an annual volume
of scholarly essays published by Ashgate Press. He has published articles on Elizabethan
music, Shakespeare, Jonson, Australian literature, and other topics, co-produced a
full-scale production of Ben Jonson’s Oberon, the Fairy Prince, and
sits on the board of the Summer Shakespeare Trust at the University of Auckland. He is currently
working on a project entitled Shakespeare’s Theatre Games.
Student contributor enrolled in English 783/Drama 727: Studies in
English Renaissance Drama at the University of Auckland in Spring 2014, working
under the guest editorship of Tom Bishop.
Student contributor enrolled in English 783/Drama 727: Studies in
English Renaissance Drama at the University of Auckland in Spring 2014, working
under the guest editorship of Tom Bishop.
Student contributor enrolled in English 783/Drama 727: Studies in
English Renaissance Drama at the University of Auckland in Spring 2014, working
under the guest editorship of Tom Bishop.
Student contributor enrolled in English 783/Drama 727: Studies in
English Renaissance Drama at the University of Auckland in Spring 2014, working
under the guest editorship of Tom Bishop.
Sir William Cecil authored or edited the following items in MoEML’s bibliography:
Cecil, William. A
Collection of State Papers Relating to Affairs in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, from
the year 1571 to 1596. Ed. William Murdin. London: William
Bowyer, 1759.
Geoffrey Chaucer authored or edited the following items in MoEML’s bibliography:
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The
Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Ed. F.N. Robinson. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1957. Remediated by Corpus of Middle English
Prose and Verse.
Stephen Gosson authored or edited the following items in MoEML’s bibliography:
Gosson, Stephen. Playes confuted in fiue actions prouing that they are not to be suffred in a Christian
common weale, by the waye both the cauils of Thomas Lodge, and the play of playes,
written in their defence, and other obiections of players frendes, are truely set
downe and directlye aunsweared. London: Thomas Gosson, 1582. STC 12095.
Robert Greene authored or edited the following items in MoEML’s bibliography:
Greene, Robert. The
Second Part of Cony-Catching. The Elizabethan Underworld. Ed. A.V. Judges. 1930. Reprinted by New York: Octagon, 1965.
149–178. Print.
William Harrison authored or edited the following items in MoEML’s bibliography:
Holinshed, Raphael and William Harrison. The first and second volumes of Chronicles comprising 1 The description and historie
of England, 2 The description and historie of Ireland, 3 The description and historie
of Scotland: first collected and published by Raphaell Holinshed, William Harrison,
and others: now newlie augmented and continued (with manifold matters of singular
note and worthie memorie) to the yeare 1586. London, 1587.
STC 13569.
Raphael Holinshed authored or edited the following items in MoEML’s bibliography:
Holinshed, Raphael and William Harrison. The first and second volumes of Chronicles comprising 1 The description and historie
of England, 2 The description and historie of Ireland, 3 The description and historie
of Scotland: first collected and published by Raphaell Holinshed, William Harrison,
and others: now newlie augmented and continued (with manifold matters of singular
note and worthie memorie) to the yeare 1586. London, 1587.
STC 13569.
Holinshed, Raphael. The firste [laste] volume of the chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande. London: for John Hunne, 1577. STC 13568b.
Dekker,
Thomas, Stephen
Harrison, Ben Jonson, and
Thomas Middleton. The Whole Royal and Magnificent Entertainment of King James through the City of
London, 15 March 1604, with the Arches of Triumph. Ed. R. Malcolm
Smuts. Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works. Gen.
ed. Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino. Oxford: Oxford UP,
2007. 219–279. Print.
Gifford, William, ed. The Works of Ben Jonson.
By Ben Jonson. Vol. 1. London: Nichol,
1816. Remediated by Internet Archive.
Jonson,
Ben. The Alchemist. London: New Mermaids,
1991. Print.
Jonson, Ben. Bartholomew
Fair. Ed. Suzanne Gossett, based on The Revels Plays edition
ed. E.A. Horsman. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000. Revels Student Editions. Print.
Jonson,
Ben. Ben: Ionson’s execration against Vulcan. London: J. Okes for John Benson and A. Crooke, 1640. STC 14771.
Jonson,
Ben. B. Ion: his part of King Iames his royall and
magnificent entertainement through his honorable cittie of London, Thurseday the 15.
of March. 1603 so much as was presented in the first and last of their triumphall
arch’s. London, 1604. STC 14756.
Jonson,
Ben. The Complete Poetry of Ben Jonson. Ed. William B. Hunter, Jr. New York: New York UP, 1963. Print.
Jonson, Ben. The Complete
Poetry of Ben Jonson. Ed. William B. Hunter. Stuart Edtions.
New York: New YorkUP, 1963.
Jonson, Ben. The Devil is
an Ass. Ed. Peter Happé. Manchester and New York: Manchester
UP, 1996. Revels Plays. Print.
Jonson, Ben. Epicene. Ed. Richard Dutton. Revels Plays. Manchester:
Manchester UP, 2004. Print.
Jonson, Ben. Epicoene, or
the silent woman. London, 1620. STC 14763.
Jonson,
Ben. Every Man Out of His Humour. Ed.
Helen Ostovich. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2001. Print.
Jonson,
Ben. The First, of Blacknesse, Personated at the
Court, at White-hall, on the Twelfth Night, 1605. The
Characters of Two Royall Masques: The One of Blacknesse, the Other of Beautie.
Personated by the Most Magnificent of Queenes Anne Queene of Great Britaine, &c.
with her Honorable Ladyes, 1605 and 1608 at White-hall. London : For Thomas
Thorp, and are to be Sold at the Signe of the Tigers Head in Paules Church-yard, 1608.
Sig. A3r-C2r. STC 14761.
Jonson,
Ben. Oberon, The Faery Prince. The Workes of Benjamin Jonson. Vol. 1. London: Will Stansby, 1616.
Sig. 4N2r-2N6r.
Jonson, Ben. On the
Famous Voyage.The Works of Ben Jonson. 8 vols.
London, 1875. 8:232–39.
Jonson,
Ben. The Staple of Newes. The Works. Vol. 2. London: Printed by I.B. for Robert Allot, 1631.
Sig. 2A1r-2J2v.
Jonson, Ben. The Staple
of News. Ed. Anthony Parr. Manchester; New York: Manchester
UP, 1999. Revels Plays. Print.
Jonson,
Ben. To Penshurst.The
Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. Stephen
Greenblatt, Carol T. Christ, Alfred David,
Barbara K. Lewalski, Lawrence Lipking,
George M. Logan, Deidre Shauna Lynch,
Katharine Eisaman Maus, James Noggle, Jahan
Ramazani, Catherine Robson, James Simpson,
Jon Stallworthy, Jack Stillinger, and M. H.
Abrams. 9th ed. Vol. B. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012.
1547.
Jonson,
Ben. Underwood. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1905. Remediated by Internet Archive.
Jonson, Ben. The vvorkes
of Beniamin Ionson. Containing these playes, viz. 1 Bartholomew Fayre. 2 The staple
of
newes. 3 The Divell is an asse. London, 1641. STC 14754.
Christopher Marlowe authored or edited the following items in MoEML’s bibliography:
Marlowe, Christopher. The
Troublesome Raigne and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England.
London: William Jones, dwelling neere Holbourne conduit, at the signe of the Gunne,
1594.
Anthony Munday authored or edited the following items in MoEML’s bibliography:
Anthony Munday. The
Triumphs of Re-United Britannia. Arthur F. Kinney. Renaissance Drama: An Anthology of Plays and Entertainments. 2nd ed.
Toronto: Wiley, 2005.
Munday, Anthony. Metropolis Coronata, The Trivmphes of Ancient Drapery.
London: George Purslowe, 1615.
DEEP 630. STC 18275.
Munday, Anthony. The
Trivmphs of the Golden Fleece. London: T[homas]
S[nodham], 1623. STC 18280.
Stow, John, Anthony Munday, and Henry Holland. THE SVRVAY of LONDON: Containing, The Originall, Antiquitie, Encrease, and
more Moderne Estate of the sayd Famous Citie. As also, the Rule and Gouernment thereof
(both Ecclesiasticall and Temporall) from time to time. With a briefe Relation of
all
the memorable Monuments, and other especiall Obseruations, both in and about the same
CITIE. Written in the yeere 1598. by Iohn Stow, Citizen of London. Since then,
continued, corrected and much enlarged, with many rare and worthy Notes, both of
Venerable Antiquity, and later memorie; such, as were neuer published before this
present yeere 1618. London: George Purslowe, 1618. STC 23344. Yale University Library copy.
Stow, John, Anthony Munday, and Humphrey
Dyson. THE SURVEY OF LONDON: CONTAINING The
Original, Increase, Modern Estate and Government of that City, Methodically set down.
With a Memorial of those famouser Acts of Charity, which for publick and Pious Vses
have been bestowed by many Worshipfull Citizens and Benefactors. As also all the
Ancient and Modern Monuments erected in the Churches, not only of those two famous
Cities, LONDON and WESTMINSTER, but (now newly added) Four miles compass. Begun first
by the pains and industry of John Stow, in the year 1598. Afterwards inlarged by the
care and diligence of A.M. in the year 1618. And now compleatly finished by the study
&labour of A.M., H.D. and others, this present year 1633. Whereunto, besides many
Additions (as appears by the Contents) are annexed divers Alphabetical Tables,
especially two, The first, an index of Things. The second, a Concordance of
Names. London: Printed for Nicholas Bourne, 1633. STC 23345.5.
Thomas Nashe authored or edited the following items in MoEML’s bibliography:
Nashe,
Thomas. Pierce Penileſſe His Svpplication to the
Diuell. London, 1592. STC 18373.
Nashe, Thomas. The
returne of the renowned Caualiero Pasquill of England from the other side the seas,
and his meeting with Marforius at London vpon the Royall Exchange where they encounter
with a little houshold talke of Martin and Martinisme, discouering the scabbe that
is
bredde in England, and conferring together about the speedie dispersing of the golden
legende of the liues of saints. London, 1589. STC 19457.3.
Nashe,
Thomas. A Wonderfull Strange and Miraculous
Astrologicall Prognostication for this Yeere 1591. London: Thomas Scarlet,
1591.
Shakespeare, William. The
first part of the contention betwixt the two famous houses of Yorke and Lancaster
with
the death of the good Duke Humphrey: and the banishment and death of the Duke of
Suffolke, and the tragicall end of the proud Cardinall of VVinchester, vvith the
notable rebellion of Iacke Cade: and the Duke of Yorkes first claime vnto the
crowne. London, 1594. STC 26099.
Shakespeare, William. King Richard III. Ed. James R. Siemon. London: Methuen,
2009. The Arden Shakespeare.
Shakespeare, William. The
Life of King Henry the Eighth. The Complete Works of
Shakespeare. Ed. David Bevington. 5th ed. New York: Pearson
Longman, 2004. 919–64.
Shakespeare, William. Mr.
VVilliam Shakespeares comedies, histories, & tragedies Published according to the
true originall copies. London, 1623. STC 22273.
Shakespeare, William. The
Second Part of King Henry the Sixth. The Complete Works of
Shakespeare. Ed. David Bevington. 5th ed. New York: Pearson
Longman, 2004. 552–984.
A suburban neighbourhood located just north of Moorfields and outside Londonʼs City Wall, Shoreditch was a focal point of early modern theatrical culture. Following a boom in Londonʼs population from 1550 to 1600, the neighbourhood became a prime target for development. The building of the Theatre in 1576 and the Curtain in the following year established Shoreditchʼs reputation as Londonʼs premier entertainment district, and the neigbourhood also featured a growing number
of taverns, alehouses, and brothels. These latter establishments were often frequented
by local players, of whom many prominent members were buried on the grounds of nearby
St. Leonardʼs Church. Today, Shoreditch faces the potential revival of its early modern theatrical culture through the efforts
of the Museum of London Archaeology and the Tower Hamlets Theatre Company.
Shoreditch is mentioned in the following documents:
Described by Weinreb as redolent of squalor and vice (Weinreb 39), London’s Bankside district in Southwark was known for its taverns, brothels and playhouses in the early modern period. However,
in approximately 50 BCE its strategic location on the south bank of the Thames enticed the Roman army to use it as a military base for its conquering of Britain.
From Bankside, the Romans built a bridge to the north side of the river and established the ancient
town of Londinium. The Bankside district is mentioned in a variety of early modern texts, mostly in reference to
the bawdy reputation of its citizens. Today, London’s Bankside is known as an arts district and is considered essential to the culture of the city.
The Globe was the open-air, public theatre in which William Shakespeare was a shareholder. It was one of the theatres at which the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, later the King’s Men, regularly performed. Most of Shakespeare’s plays were performed at the Globe, along with the works of many other playwrights. It was an open-air, polygonal theatre
with standing room around a thrust stage and three levels of gallery seating. It was
built in 1599, burnt down in 1613, rebuilt in 1614 and closed in 1642. A modern reconstruction now stands a short distance from the site of the original
in Bankside.
The Globe is mentioned in the following documents:
In 1577, the Curtain, a second purpose-built London playhouse arose in Shoreditch, just north of the City of London. The Curtain, a polygonal amphitheatre, became a major venue for theatrical and other entertainments
until at least 1622 and perhaps as late as 1698. Most major playing companies, including the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the Queen’s Men, and Prince Charles’s Men, played there. It is the likely site for the premiere of Shakespeare’s plays Romeo and Juliet and Henry V.
The Curtain is mentioned in the following documents:
The Swan was the second of the Bankside theatres. It was located at Paris Garden. It was in use from 1595 and possibly staged some of the plays of William Shakespeare (SHaLT).
For information about the Hope, a modern map marking the site where the it once stood, and a walking tour that will
take you to the site, visit the Shakespearean London Theatres (ShaLT) article on the Hope.
Built in 1587 by theatre financier Philip Henslowe, the Rose was Bankside’s first open-air
amphitheatre playhouse (Egan). Its
foundation, excavated in 1989, reveals a fourteen-sided structure about 22
metres in diameter, making it smaller than other contemporary playhouses (White 302). Relatively free of civic interference and surrounded by
pleasure-seeking crowds, the Rose did very well,
staging works by such playwrights as Shakespeare, Marlowe, Kyd, and Dekker (Egan).
St. Paul’s Cathedral was—and remains—an important church in London. In 962, while London was occupied by the Danes, St. Paul’s monastery was burnt and raised anew. The
church survived the Norman conquest of 1066, but in 1087 it was burnt again.
An ambitious Bishop named Maurice took the opportunity to build a new St. Paul’s, even petitioning the king
to offer a piece of land belonging to one of his castles (Times 115). The building Maurice initiated would
become the cathedral of St. Paul’s
which survived until the Great Fire of London.
St. Paul’s Cathedral is mentioned in the following documents:
Agas Map
