Interior of Gray’s Inn Hall.
The original entrance to Gray’s Inn was a Gray’s Inn Lane, now Gray’s Inn Road, the Holborn entrance being made about the year 1600. The present archway certainly wears a modern aspect: that may be through the old brickwork being stuccoed at a later period. Gray’s Inn was famous for its revelling, Masque Plays and other diversions being frequently acted within its walls.
We know for almost certain that one of Shakespeare’s plays was performed at Gray’s Inn. On the even of Innocents’ Day, 1594, a play was enacted called “The Comedy of Errors,” before the benchers, students and invited guests. During the performance a disturbance was caused by the students of the Inner Temple being dissatisfied with their seating accommodation. A Gray’s Inn chronicler describes the scene thus: “Was begun and continued to the end on nothing but confusion and errors, whereupon it was afterwards called the Night of Errors.” This same play was given in the identical Hall by members of the Elizabethan Society, 1895. An early representation of a play at Gray’s Inn was named “Jocasta,” a Greek play, 1566, adapted and translated for the English stage by George Gascoigne and Francis Kenwelmersche, both of Gray’s Inn. The first edition of this play is included in the complete works of George Gascoigne, entitled “A Hundred Sundrie Floures,” bound up in one small Poem, no date, but issued in 1573. A second edition appeared in 1575, and a third in 1587. There is no record of any stage play or masque being given at Lincoln’s Inn.
Jocasta,
A Tragedie written in Greek by Euripides, translated and digested into acte by George Gascoygne and Francis Kinwelmershe, of Grayes Inne, and there by them presented, 1566.
MR. WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARES
COMEDIES,
HISTORIES, &
TRAGEDIES.
Published according to the True Originall Copies.