Shakespearean Playhouses / A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration

by Joseph Quincy Adams

And the accounts of the Revels' Office inform us:

Hallomas Day, being the first of November, a play in the Banqueting House at Whitehall, called The Moor of Venice.

Apparently, however, the King was not pleased with the Banqueting House as a place for dramatic performances, for he promptly ordered the Great Hall of the palace—a room approximately ninety feet in length and forty feet in breadth[657]—to be made ready for the next play:

For making ready the Great Chamber at Whitehall for the King's Majesty to see the play, by the space of two days ... 39s. 4d.

The work was completed with dispatch, for on the Sunday following the performance of Othello in the Banqueting House, The Merry Wives of Windsor was acted in the Great Hall. The next play to be given at Court was also presented in the same room:

On St. Stephen's Night, in the Hall, a play called Measure for Measure.

And from this time on the Great Hall was the usual place for Court performances. The abandonment of the Banqueting House was probably due to the facts that the Hall was smaller in size, could be more easily heated in the winter, and was in general better adapted to dramatic performances. Possibly the change was due also to the decayed condition of the old structure and to preparations for its removal. Stow, in his Annals under the date of 1607, writes:

The last year the King pulled down the old, rotten, slight-builded Banqueting House at Whitehall, and new-builded the same this year very strong and stately, being every way larger than the first.[658]

This new Banqueting House was completed in the early part of 1608. John Chamberlain writes to Sir Dudley Carleton on January 5, 1608: "The masque goes forward at Court for Twelfth Day, tho' I doubt the New Room will be scant ready."[659] Thereafter the Banqueting House, "every way larger than the first," was regularly used for the presentation of masques. But it was rarely if ever used for plays. Throughout the reign of James, the ordinary place for dramatic performances, as has been observed, was the Great Hall.