‘The Fortune Play-house betweene White Crosse streete and Golding Lane was burnd downe to the ground in the yeare 1618. And built againe with brick worke on the outside in the yeare 1622. And now pulled downe on the inside by the souldiers this 1649.

‘The Hope, on the Banks side in Southwarke, commonly called the Beare Garden, a Play House for Stage Playes on Mundayes, Wedensdayes, Fridayes, and Saterdayes, and for the baiting of the Beares on Tuesdayes and Thursdayes, the stage being made to take vp and downe when they please. It was built in the year 1610, and now pulled downe to make tennementes, by Thomas Walker, a peticoate maker in Cannon Streete, on Tuesday the 25 day of March 1656. Seuen of Mr. Godfries beares, by the command of Thomas Pride, then hie Sheriefe of Surry, were then shot to death, on Saterday the 9 day of February 1655, by a company of souldiers.’

Downes and Wright do not mention the Hope, as they were not discussing baiting. On the other hand, the annalist says nothing of the fate of the Red Bull, which in fact appears to have escaped destruction, to have been occasionally used for ‘drolls’ during the Commonwealth, and to have served once more, with the Cockpit and Salisbury Court, the demolition of which was probably limited to the interior fittings, for the first entertainments of the Restoration. The building of Vere Street in 1660, Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1661, and Drury Lane in 1663 made them obsolete.[1063]

These records leave ambiguous the fate of the Curtain and the Swan. The Curtain is traceable in occasional use up to about 1627, and is figured as a roundish building in the ‘Ryther’ maps, which are probably of a decade later.[1064] It cannot, therefore, have vanished long before the civil wars, and was the most long-lived of all the theatres. It may, of course, have been rebuilt, later than its original foundation in 1576, but as to this there is no evidence. The ‘Ryther’ maps also show the Fortune. No other maps give any of the theatres on the north of the river. Of the Bankside houses, the Swan is shown by a decagonal ground-plan, with the inscription ‘Old Play house’, in the Paris Garden Manor survey of 1627.[1065] And it is described as still existing side by side with the Globe and the Hope, but clearly also as derelict, in the following passage from Holland’s Leaguer (1632):

‘Especially, and aboue all the rest, she was most taken with the report of three famous Amphytheators, which stood so neere scituated, that her eye might take view of them from the lowest Turret, one was the Continent of the World, because halfe the yeere a World of Beauties, and braue Spirits resorted vnto it; the other was a building of excellent Hope, and though wild beasts and Gladiators did most possesse it, yet the Gallants that came to behold those combats, though they were of a mixt Society, yet were many Noble worthies amongst them; the last which stood, and as it were shak’d handes with this Fortresse, beeing in times past as famous as any of the other, was now fallen to decay, and like a dying Swanne, hanging downe her head, seemed to sing her owne dierge.’[1066]

I turn now to the maps of the Bankside, which, had they been datable, and drawn with cartographical precision, ought not only to have furnished valuable evidence as to the duration of the theatres, but also to have indicated accurately the position of each amongst the streets and lanes of the district. Neither condition is, however, fulfilled. Even where the date of an engraving is known, the date of the survey on which it was based can, as a rule, be only approximately determined. And the constant intrusion of pictorial elements, which gives the maps the character of perspective views rather than of plans, is naturally emphasized on the Bankside, which has to serve as a foreground to the design. The main topographical features which have to be borne in mind are simple, and can easily be related to those in John Rocque’s map of 1746, as interpreted by Strype’s Survey of 1720, or in a modern Ordnance map. The whole region concerned lies roughly between the southern approaches to London and Blackfriars Bridges. It underwent a good deal of development during one period, especially in the area of the Clink, a liberty lying between Southwark on the east and another liberty of Paris Garden on the west, and affording a convenient suburban resort outside the jurisdiction of the City. Stowe’s account of the neighbourhood in 1598 is perhaps a little misleading. He describes no more than the Bankside proper, ‘a continuall building of tenements’ on the riverside, extending about half a mile west of London Bridge. Here he places, from west to east, the bear gardens, the former stews, the prison of the Clink, Winchester House, and the church of St. Mary Overie in Southwark.[1067] This agrees pretty well with the maps of Agas (c. 1561) and Norden (1593), except that there was already a group of houses falling outside Stowe’s purview, which stood on the river near Paris Garden Stairs and practically continued the Bankside westwards. But there was also, which Stowe does not mention, a marshy hinterland to the Bankside, of ponds and gardens, among which Agas, and still more Norden, show a good many scattered houses. By the end of the century there was a fairly definite north to south street known as Deadman’s Place, which debouched from the east end of the Bankside, and from which in its turn struck out one called Maid or Maiden Lane, which went in an irregular line westwards over the marshes, and was finally joined by two divergent ways, Love Lane and Gravel (afterwards Holland) Lane, to the Paris Garden group of houses. Thus was formed a rough parallelogram, half a mile long, and from 200 to 350 feet deep, within or near which all the theatrical sites are placed by the maps. In Norden’s map of 1593, both the Bear House and the Play House, which must be the Rose, stand considerably to the west of Deadman’s Place. The Bear House is the most westerly of the two, and is about halfway between the Bankside houses on the north and Maid Lane on the south. The Rose is a good deal nearer Maid Lane. In the Delaram views (1603–20) there are three flagged, but unnamed, structures. One which stands well back from the river and, after allowing for the view-point, appears slightly the most easterly of the three, is cylindrical; the upper half is alone windowed, and has a smaller diameter than the lower half. It is placed amongst trees and meadows. There is nothing which obviously indicates Maid Lane.[1068] The two other buildings stand much nearer the river’s edge, amongst houses; they are angled, probably octagonal, and not cylindrical. The ‘Hondius’ views repeat the cylindrical building and the most westerly of the two angled buildings much in the same relative position; the intermediate one has disappeared. It seems obvious that the cylindrical building must be the Globe, and the other two the Bear Garden, afterwards the Hope, to the west, and the Rose, left out of the ‘Hondius’ group, because it disappeared in 1605, in the centre. The Delaram and ‘Hondius’ views do not extend far enough west to include the Swan. It is shown by Visscher in 1616, and named. So are the Bear Garden and the Globe, both of which appear as angled buildings, octagonal or hexagonal, about equidistant from the Bankside houses, and north of Maid Lane, the angle of which next Deadman’s Place is shown.[1069] As the change from a cylindrical to an angled representation of the Globe coincides with the rebuilding of the house in 1614, we may perhaps infer that the structural form is not a mere cartographic convention.[1070] It is rather singular that in the Merian maps (circa 1638) there are four houses again, including the Swan, well to the west. This, with two of the three houses in the eastern group, is named by the engraver. A third unnamed house stands between the Globe on the east and the Bear Garden on the west, which is approximately where the Rose used to stand. It is distinctly nearer the river than the other two, but all three are north of Maid Lane, from which the Bear Garden is slightly more remote than the Globe.[1071] If the Rose had actually a second term of existence, it was probably only a brief one.[1072] The fullest of the Ryther maps (c. 1636–45) has two angled buildings, one to the west, rather nearer to Bankside than to Maid Lane; the other to the east, and south of Maid Lane, standing in an angle between that and a track running from north-west to south-east. There are no names, but obviously the eastern house is the Globe, and the western the Hope, and indeed the dogs can be made out. The track joining Maid Lane may be Globe Alley. The Hollar view of 1647 shows two cylindrical, not angled, buildings. One lettered ‘The Globe’ is on the extreme brink of the river; the other, to the east and south of it, is lettered ‘Beere bayting’. Faithorne and Newcourt, in 1658, give no theatres proper, but only a ring marked ‘Beare garden’. Finally, Leeke and Hollar about 1666 give a single unnamed roundish theatre, south of Maid Lane. Presumably it is the Globe, but copied from a survey of earlier date, as the Globe had been pulled down for tenements in 1644.

On the whole, the maps are disappointing guides. It seems more probable than has quite been recognized, that the singular two-storied structure shown by Hondius and Delaram really represents the earlier, the Shakespearian, Globe. And the representation of a fourth house by Merian, even if he did not know its name, gives support to the view that the Rose may have had some kind of existence at a later date than the Sewers records indicate. But as regards the alinement, the distance from the river, and the relation to Maid Lane, of the three houses in the Clink, it is clear that no consistent story is told. The general impression one gets is that the Hope stood farthest to the west, then the Rose, and then the Globe; and that the Rose stood nearest to the river, then the Hope, and then the Globe. Nor is this inconsistent with documentary evidence, which in particular indicates that the parcel of land, on which the latest of the Bear Gardens was built, was contiguous on the west to that known as ‘the little Rose’.[1073] Bear Garden and Rose Alley, running side by side from the Bankside into Maid Lane or Park Street, are traceable in eighteenth-century maps and in the modern Ordnance map.[1074] Did one judge by the maps alone, one would probably, in spite of the dissenting testimony of ‘Ryther’ and of Leeke and Hollar, come to the conclusion that the Globe stood to the north of Maid Lane. The balance of other evidence points unmistakably in the other direction.[1075]

B. THE PUBLIC THEATRES

i.The Red Lion Inn.
ii.The Bull Inn.
iii.The Bell Inn.
iv.The Bel Savage Inn.
v.The Cross Keys Inn.
vi.The Theatre.
vii.The Curtain.
viii.Newington Butts.
ix.The Rose.
x.The Swan.
xi.The Globe.
xii.The Fortune.
xiii.The Boar’s Head.
xiv.The Red Bull.
xv.The Hope.
xvi.Porter’s Hall.

i. THE RED LION INN