A TYPICAL SHAKESPEREAN STAGE
From Albright's Shaksperian Stage
FOOTNOTES:
[6] In this chapter the dates appended to the plays indicate the conjectured year of presentation. Dates of publication are prefixed by pr.
CHAPTER VI
The Elizabethan Theater
In 1576, James Burbage, father of the great actor, Richard Burbage, and himself a member of the Earl of Leicester's company, built the first London playhouse, the Theater in Shoreditch. In the next year a second playhouse, the Curtain, was erected nearby, and these seem to have remained the only theaters until 1587-1588, when probably the Rose, on the Bankside, was built by Henslowe. In 1599 Richard and Cuthbert Burbage, after some difficulty over their lease, demolished the old Theater and used the timber for the Globe, near the Rose, on the Bankside. The Swan, another theater, had been built there in 1594, somewhat to the west; and in 1614 the Hope was erected hard by the old Rose and the new Globe, which in 1613 had replaced the old Globe. Meantime the Fortune had been built by Henslowe and Alleyn in 1600 in Golden Lane to the north of Cripplegate, on the model of the Globe, and the Red Bull was erected in the upper end of St. John's Street about 1603-1607. These were all public theaters, open to the air, built of wood, outside the city limits and the jurisdiction of the city corporation.
Before the Theater, plays had been acted in various places about the city, and especially in inn-yards, some of which long continued to be used for dramatic performances. At an early date also, the companies of children actors connected with the choirs of St. Paul's and the Queen's Chapel had given public performances, probably indoors, at places near St. Paul's and in Blackfriars. When the Burbages were in difficulties about the Theater, they had leased certain rooms in the dismantled monastery of Blackfriars, but had then released these to a company of children which acted there for some years. In 1608 the Burbages regained possession of this property, and Shakespeare's company began acting there. This Blackfriars theater was known as a private theater in order to avoid the application of certain statutes directed against the public theaters, but it differed from them merely in being indoors, with artificial lights, and higher prices. It was used by Shakespeare's company as a winter theater, while the Globe served for summer performances, and it was the model for various other private theaters, two of which survived the Protectorate and became in turn the models for the Restoration Theater. Drury Lane and Covent Garden, indeed, trace their ancestry back directly to the Blackfriars through the Cockpit and the Salisbury Court playhouses.