Copyright held by
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Further details of licences are available from our
Licences page. For more
information, contact the project director,
Provider: University of Victoria
Database: The Map of Early Modern London
Content: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
TY - ELEC
A1 - Knox, Alyssa
ED - Jenstad, Janelle
T1 - The Swan
T2 - The Map of Early Modern London
PY - 2020
DA - 2020/06/26
CY - Victoria
PB - University of Victoria
LA - English
UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/SWAN1.htm
UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/xml/standalone/SWAN1.xml
ER -
RT Web Page
SR Electronic(1)
A1 Knox, Alyssa
A6 Jenstad, Janelle
T1 The Swan
T2 The Map of Early Modern London
WP 2020
FD 2020/06/26
RD 2020/06/26
PP Victoria
PB University of Victoria
LA English
OL English
LK https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/SWAN1.htm
Doggesand
Gulls: Sharp Dealing at the Swan (1597), and Again at St. Paul’s (1606)
Neere the Playe Howse: The Swan Theatre and Community Blight
SwanRevisited
Built in
St. Saviour (Southwark) dates back at least
to Overies
referring to its being over
the
Thames, that is, on its southern bank.
After S. Mary Owber
.
Bankside ran along the south bank of the Thames from Winchester house to the place where Blackfriars
Bridge would later be built. Described by Weinreb as redolent of squalor and vice,
the name
Falcon Inn was a tavern in the Bankside area and was a popular destination for many Elizabethan playwrights.
The Bear Garden was never a garden, but rather a polygonal bearbaiting arena whose exact locations across time are not known (Mackinder and Blatherwick 18). Labelled on the Agas map as The Bearebayting
, the Bear Garden would have been one of several permanent structures—wooden arenas, dog kennels, bear pens—dedicated to the popular spectacle of bearbaiting in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The history of the two Blackfriars theatres is long and fraught with legal and political struggles. The story begins in
This page points to the district known as Whitefriars. For the theatre, see Whitefriars Theatre.
The Swan was the second of the Bankside theatres. It was located at Paris Garden. It was in use from
The Julian calendar, in use in the British Empire until September 1752. This calendar is used for dates where the date of the beginning of the year is ambigious.
The Julian calendar with the calendar year regularized to beginning on 1 January.
The Julian calendar with the calendar year beginning on 25 March. This was the calendar used in the British Empire until September 1752.
The Gregorian calendar, used in the British Empire from September 1752. Sometimes
referred to as
The Anno Mundi (year of the world
) calendar is based on the supposed date of the
creation of the world, which is calculated from Biblical sources. At least two different
creation dates are in common use. See Anno Mundi (Wikipedia).
Regnal dates are given as the number of years into the reign of a particular monarch.
Our practice is to tag such dates with
Research Assistant, 2018-present. Lucas Simpson is a student at the University of Victoria.
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.
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–present. Associate Project Director, 2015–present. Assistant Project Director, 2013-2014. MoEML Research Fellow, 2013. Kim McLean-Fiander comes to
Janelle Jenstad is Associate Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of
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.
Student contributor enrolled in
Actor. Father of
First Baron Burghley.
Playwright, poet, and author.
Dutch humanist.
Queen of England and Ireland
Theatre financier.
Bohemian etcher. Moved to London in
Poet and playwright.
Businessman and moneylender.
Swiss engraver, etcher, and book dealer.
Playwright.
Playwright and poet.
Actor. Killed in a duel by
Friend of
Cartographer. Drew a map of London in
Sheriff of London
Most
mol:
prefix and accessed through the web application
with their id + .xml
.
The molagas prefix points to the shape representation of a location on
Links to page-images in the Chadwyck-Healey
Links to page-images in the
The mdt (
The mdtlist (
_subcategories, meaning all subcategories of the category.
The molgls (
This molvariant prefix is used on
This molajax prefix is used on
The molstow prefix is used on
Our editorial and encoding practices are documented in detail in the Praxis section of our website.
According to Ingram, the foundations of the Swan theatre were probably laid by
It is unclear whether the Swan was used for any plays in 1595—playing was
suspended that summer, possibly around the same time as the Swan was finished
(Brazen Age 114). The suspension
was brief, however, as
The Swan was located in St. Saviour’s Parish, at
the western end of the Bankside, in the Liberty
and Manor of Paris Gardens. Ingram speculates that
The Swan’s lifetime was not uneventful. In 1597, a performance of
By that date, several of the players who had formerly been at the Swan had
transferred their loyalty to the Rose. Since the
entire Pembroke company had been bonded to
Those of the Earl of Pembroke’s Men who had not moved to the Rose continued to play at the Swan, licensed or
not, in the fall of 1597. Part of might have played if it had pleased them in
the defendant’s house, as other of their fellows have done
(PRO Req.2/266/23; qtd. in Ingram, Brazen Age 189). In February 1597/8, the
Privy Council sent letters to the Justices of Middlesex and Surrey, and to the
Master of Revels, drawing attention to the fact that only two playing companies
were licensed (the Lord Admiral’s and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men), but that a
third company—presumably the Earl of Pembroke’s men at the Swan—was playing
(Brazen Age 205–06). The letter
suggested that said third company may be suppressed and none suffered hereafter
to play but those two formerly named
(Acts
of the Privy Council 1597–98 327; qtd. in Brazen Age 206). Whether or not playing at the Swan
actually ceased is unknown. While it is generally accepted that it did, Ingram
argues that the churchwardens’ requests for tithes from playhouse owners,
continuing at least until July of 1598, imply that the Swan was still in use
(Brazen Age 207–210). In any case,
at some time around 1598 or perhaps 1599, plays were no longer being performed
at the Swan.
In 1600, feats of activity
by Peter Bromvill in 1600, and fencers performed in it
in 1602 (2:413). The Swan’s most
active period lay ahead of it, from 1611 to about 1615, when it was probably
managed by Old Playhouse
(2:414), and in Nicholas Goodman’s
beeing in times past, as famous as any of the other [Amphytheators], was now fallen to decay, and like a dying Swanne, hanging downe her head, seemed to sing her owne dierge(Goodman F2v). It is shown on maps drawn in 1616 by
inevitable basis of any
comprehensive account of the main structural features of a [Shakespearean]
playhouse
(Chambers 2:527). Of
course, as a copy, the version we have now is second-hand evidence. Since its
discovery, critics have criticized, lauded, and measured this sketch. It has
gained the status of a dubious authority on Elizabethan theatres. Since the
early twentieth century, though, viewpoints have changed drastically, and the
sketch’s relevance to Elizabethan theatre architecture in general has been
disputed.
The sketch depicts a roughly elliptical area. The walls of the theatre are drawn
in at the far end, with three levels of galleries—the first labelled
In quite skilfully delineated
(qtd. in Gleason 329). Engravers of the time considered his
drawings no mean catch
(qtd. 329).
show a skill far beyond that of most persons
(330).
It is important to know not only the artists’ level of skill, but also the style
in which they worked. Gleason explains that, in Renaissance prints, the
convention of simultaneous representation was commonly used (332). The goal is not to produce a snapshot of any
particular moment in time, but rather a sort of abbreviation of the normal
goings-on at a location (332). With
this in mind, it becomes less important to speculate, as some scholars have,
about exactly what the actors are doing, or why the trumpeter and actors are
simultaneously present. A.M. Nagler in
1952 and George Reynolds in 1967, for
example, posited that the actors on the stage are participating in a rehearsal.
Chambers, in 1923, considered the
simultaneous presence of the trumpeter and actors a mistake. That no audience is
drawn does not necessarily mean that no audience was present. Such details are
unimportant—
Critics have written frequently about the Swan sketch since its discovery. In
general, critics in the first half of the twentieth century are negative about
the quality and reliability of the sketch. According to D.F. Rowan, three
critics in the first decade of the twentieth century (V.E. Albright, W.J.
Lawrence, and William Archer) dismissed the sketch as hearsay evidence
or a
drawing of a unique theatre
(qtd. in Rowan
39). Rowan finds the most convincing statement of this position in
John Cranford Adams’s 1942
must always be approached with reservations, for it abounds in so many contradictions, omissions, and obvious errors that no reliance can be placed on any detail unless that detail is sustained by evidence from other sources(qtd. in Rowan 39). As late as 1958, A.M. Nagler wondered
What was going on in the theatre while the wretched draftsman, who lacked an eye for perspective or proportion, was doing his sketch?(Nagler 10). Such early dismissals of
After about 1960, critics began to be more forgiving of
Recent criticism on the Swan sketch generally either follows the mid-century
trend of examining very specific features, or ventures into the metacritical. It
would be overly simplistic to suggest that there is any consensus about the
accuracy of the Swan sketch, for dialogue is ongoing.
Unfortunately, our only source of information about the structure of the Swan
comes from a single sketch of questionable reliability. There is no critical
consensus about whether
The problematic nature of our one source has not stopped critics from hypothesizing about the Swan’s structure. Most critics do not provide detailed information about how they have come to conclusions (or, rather, made guesses) about the Swan’s structure, so we may assume that these guesses are based on simple examination of the sketch. Some critics, however, have used measurements of the sketch and mathematics to arrive at what may be more concrete conclusions about the structure of the Swan (if we assume the sketch is correct). Of these articles, one by Robert Hosley in particular attempts to clearly explain how conclusions about the Swan’s structure are generated, both to ensure that the sketch is clearly understood (by measuring it, rather than simply looking at it), and also to take into account its possible limitations.
Hosley concludes that the Swan was a twenty-four sided polygon (
It is overly simplistic either to rely completely on or to dismiss the Swan sketch based on visual assessment of it alone, and it would also be overly simplistic to assume that it is useful as a model for all Elizabethan theatres. One critic, Scott McMillin, attempted to determine whether the plays staged at the Rose could also have been staged at the Swan. McMillin found that a very concentrated one third of the Rose plays contained stage directions using a raised structure more complex than the gallery at the Swan, and using a discovery space or third door (163). The other two thirds of the Rose plays used no such spaces, and could have been staged at the Swan.
McMillin concludes that either a temporary structure, perhaps a sort of pavilion,
could have been erected at either theatre, or the Rose had permanent structures not present at the Swan (163). The archaeological evidence
available for the Rose does not offer any
conclusion, except that the Rose’s stage was
indeed different from that suggested by the Swan sketch (165–166). Thus, both textual and physical evidence
suggest that the Swan sketch is not typical of Elizabethan theatres in general,
and therefore cannot be used in thinking about the structure of other theatres,
like the Rose.
Because the Swan was used for plays for less than a decade in total, its
repertoire, even were it known, would be small, and the number of companies who
played there would be few. No sources comparable to
William Ingram makes an argument that one of the first companies to play in the
Swan was likely the Lord Hunsdon’s Men (Shakespeare’s company, at this point
under the patronage of George Carey, Lord Hunsdon) in 1596 (Brazen Age 142; see also 115–120 on the possible
formation in 1595 of a undocumented company that may have included Francis
Henslowe,
Evidence from lawsuits between
Lady Elizabeth’s company, according to Andrew Gurr, spent most of 1611 and 1612
travelling. From 1611 until perhaps 1614, the group was bonded to
We have proof positive that the Earl of Pembroke’s Men and the Lady Elizabeth’s Men played at the Swan, and that
The Swan’s career was generally unsettled. No company stayed for a full year before the sale of the playhouse in 1600, and it was not tenanted regularly again until 1611. The playhouse changed hands in the meantime, and the entertainment that did take place there was unpredictable. In 1602, Richard Venner announced and advertised a performance of
A Pleasant conceited Comedy never before printed. As it hath beene often acted at the Swan on the Banke-side, by the Lady Elizabeth her Servants(Middleton A1r). If more of the Swan’s repertoire were available, ventures like Scott McMillin’s study of the Rose repertoire or Mary Bly’s study of the Whitefriars repertoire would be possible. Unfortunately, with only one play, it is impossible to say whether the printed stage directions are for the space, or simply visual guides for the reader of the play. McMillin divided the Rose plays into those with and those without uses of raised and enclosed spaces; following this method,
a shop(1.1.0 s.d.).[is] discovered
There has been much speculation about this discovery and how it was staged in a
theatre that seems, from the evidence of the discover
a shop that would stay on
the main part of the stage throughout the play. Andrew Gurr has supported the
idea of some kind of hanging (Shakespearean
Stage 138). The only other point in the play at which an enclosed
space could be required, the bed scene, neatly avoids the idea of the discovery
space—the bed is thrust out
, not discovered (3.2.0 s.d.). Either of the Swan’s stage doors
could have been used in this scene, if they were wide enough for a bed (and
there is no evidence as to the size of the stage property bed). D.F. Rowan goes
so far as to state that
tailored to the playing conditions pictured in the sketch(43).
Perhaps the most telling thing about
For information about the Swan, a modern map marking the site where the it once stood, and a walking tour that will take you to the site, visit the