Why did Burbage and Brayne choose to locate the Theatre where they did in 1576? They built it in part of the dissolved priory of Holywell in Shoreditch, five hundred yards beyond the north‐east wall of the City, across Finsbury Fields – largely open land at that time.5 We have already seen that when Philip Henslowe first built a playhouse, some eleven years later, he did so in the Liberty of Clink on the Bankside – diametrically the opposite side of London (p. 12). The key common feature of the two locations – and those of every new playhouse down to the Civil War of the 1640s – is that they fell outside the jurisdiction of the City of London authorities: the Lord Mayor, the Court of Aldermen, and the Common Council.
It seems very likely that what settled the minds of Burbage, Brayne, Henslowe, and all other builders of playhouses against sites within the City was an Act of the Common Council of December 6, 1574; this in turn was clearly a response to the royal patent issued to Leicester’s Men earlier that year. That patent gave certain players royal authority to perform “as well within our City of London and liberties of the same, as also within the liberties and freedoms of any our cities, towns, boroughs etc. … without any your lets, hindrance or molestation” (EPF, 206). It also required that their plays should be “seen and allowed” by the Master of the Revels.
Box 3.1 Masters of the Revels
The Masters of the Revels were the most important officials with whom the actors of Shakespeare’s day had to conduct business on a regular basis. They had two functions: one was to ensure that entertainment of suitable quality was available to the royal court, especially during the midwinter Revels season that ran from Christmas (or, under James I, often as early as November 1, All Saints) until Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday and Lent; his other function was to censor and licence all plays that were to be performed in public.
There had been Masters of the Revels under all the Tudor monarchs, who were mainly concerned with helping the court to entertain itself, aided by an office staff which provided costumes and stage shows, supplying any necessary scenery, properties and lighting (Streitberger, 2016). The emphasis changed somewhat in 1579 when Edmund Tilney was appointed to the position. Expenses in the Revels Office had been running out of control and it was key to his remit that they be reined in. His main strategy for achieving this was to rely far less on expensive masques and shows staged by the courtiers themselves and to hire in the most successful professional players on a much more regular basis than hitherto. This was doubtless aided by the fact that leading troupes like the Earl of Leicester’s and Earl of Warwick’s Men now had London bases (the Theatre, Newington Butts), where they could build up their own stock of costumes and properties, relieving the Revels Office of the need to supply them.
In 1581 Tilney was given a Special Commission which empowered him to compel workmen to help with court theatricals at fixed wages and to require any players he saw fit to come and rehearse their repertory before him. So in his annual claim for attendance fees at court (this is for 1587/88) Tilney would claim for “attending, making choice, perusing, reforming & altering of such plays, comedies, masques and inventions as were prepared, set forth & presented before her Majesty” (Feuillerat, 1908, 379). And in his Apology for Actors, Thomas Heywood recalled how the players used to visit the old Palace of St John in Clerkenwell where Tilney lodged and kept “the office of the Revels, where our court plays have been in late days yearly rehearsed, perfected, and corrected before they come to the public view of the prince and the nobility” (E1v; 1607/8; printed 1612).6
By 1594 Tilney had been in office for fifteen years and knew more about London theatre than anyone else alive. He had been the one who enacted the Privy Council’s order for the creation of the Queen’s Men in 1583 and he had overseen a whole generation of playwrights – notably John Lyly, George Peele, Thomas Lodge, Robert Greene, Christopher Marlowe, and Thomas Kyd – who were either dead or had given up playwrighting by this date. He may well have had a hand in the formation of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, as he had the Queen’s Men, but no record of this survives. He was certainly responsible, however, for ensuring that they performed at court every year for the remainder of Elizabeth’s reign, never less than twice and once (1596/7) as often six times. We see that Love’s Labour’s Lost was published in 1598, proclaiming itself on the title‐page to be “A pleasant conceited comedy … As it was presented before her Highness this last Christmas. Newly corrected and augmented by W. Shakespere.” Since no earlier version of the play exists we cannot know what was “corrected and augmented,” but there is a good chance that the work was done in preparation for the mentioned performance at court and under Tilney’s active supervision. King Lear was published in 1608 “As it was played before the King’s Majesty at Whitehall upon S. Stephen’s night in Christmas Holidays. By his Majesty’s servants playing usually at the Globe on the Bankside.” As Andrew Gurr argues, that play clearly glances at James I’s wish to unite his two kingdoms: “It is difficult not to assume from this that the Master of the Revls could only have approved King Lear for a performance at court because he had thought the play supported the king’s position over the question of uniting the kingdoms” (1996, 33). The wording on the title‐page also opens up the possible inference that the version offered at court was not that audiences might see when the company was “playing usually at the Globe” (Dutton, 2016).
In such contexts we must see Tilney as an active collaborator with Shakespeare and others whose plays were being prepared for court performance. Contrary to the impression given by the film, Shakespeare in Love (1999; dir. John Madden), he was a man of some sophistication.7 A distant cousin of the Queen, he had dedicated to her A brief and pleasant discourse of the duties in Marriage, called the Flower of Friendship (1568; Tilney, 1992), a dialogue in the manner of Baldasare Castiglione’s influential Book of the Courtier: it went through at least five editions in his lifetime. He also prepared a substantial document called Topographical Descriptions, Regiments, and Policies; focusing on eight key European countries, it demonstrates his wide knowledge of international history, customs, diplomacy, and genealogy. Tilney intended to present it (handsomely decorated with the coats of arms of many of Europe’s leading families) to the Queen, but she died before he completed it; he started work on a version dedicated to King James, but again never presented the manuscript to him (Streitberger, 1986a).
So Tilney might have been a congenial and knowledgeable colleague in preparing plays for the court. But he could also be a strict overseer when it came to censoring and licensing plays for public performance. In 1589, at the height of the Martin Marprelate scandal (a series of puritan satirical pamphlets, attacking the Church of England) order was given “for the stay of all plays within the City, in that Mr. Tilney did utterly mislike the same,” apparently because “the players take upon themselves to handle in their plays certain matters of divinity and of state unfit to be suffered.”8 The wording of this suggests that Tilney was not disturbed that the players might support “Martin” but that he felt they should not involve themselves in matters of state at all, presumably defying his authority in presenting plays that he had refused to licence. We also have the evidence of one play manuscript which has survived, bearing the evidence of his censorship. This is Sir Thomas More, the main body of which is in the hand of the playwright Anthony Munday (see p. 42). At the head of the document Tilney has written: “Leave out the insurrection wholly and the cause thereof, & begin with Sir Thomas More at the Mayor’s sessions [i.e. scene 2], with a report afterwards of his service done being Sheriff of London upon a mutiny against the Lombards. Only by a short report & not otherwise. At your own perils. E. Tilney” (Dutton 1991, Plate 7).
This refers to the play’s graphic depiction of the notorious “Ill May Day” riots of 1517, which More was instrumental in suppressing. Those riots had been aimed at foreign workers in London, resented for edging out English jobs. There were similar disturbances in the early 1590s, particularly directed at Dutch, Flemish, and French Huguenot immigrants. It seems reasonable to infer that these were Tilney’s principal concerns in respect of the play; he did not want it to further inflame public disorder. He does not want any live‐action rioting on stage; he wants the report of the riots to specify the Lombards from Italy as targets (a less prominent group); and he wants the report short. Just as interesting as this peremptory intervention, however, is the relative lack of marking by Tilney elsewhere. This is striking in a play about a man who was executed for refusing to accept Henry VIII’s Act of Supremacy, which made him something of a Roman Catholic martyr. We might have expected that this alone would have made it unacceptable. The play itself is careful about the most sensitive issues: Henry himself (the Queen’s father) does not appear, while the text is studiously unspecific about the “Articles” to which More refuses to subscribe. There is to be sure one passage where More and the Bishop of Rochester refuse to subscribe while the Earls of Surrey and Shrewsbury do so all too avidly, to which Tilney evidently objected (his comment is now illegible). But this still demonstrates significant restraint in the face of what might be seen as serious provocation. Tilney did not reject the play out of hand and indeed seems to have wanted to work with the players and their author(s) to make it performable. Several passages not in Munday’s hand have survived alongside the main manuscript, and these are perhaps evidence that there was indeed an attempt to rewrite the play in acceptable form, though there are debates about when exactly this might have happened (see p. 72 and note 3). One of the new passages is commonly thought to be in Shakespeare’s handwriting (it is traditionally dubbed “Hand D”). None of the new passages shows Tilney’s attentions and it is not known if the play was ever actually staged.
Another instance of a Master of the Revels doing his best to make a play acceptable is found in the manuscript of Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt, written by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger in 1619. The Bishop of London initially ordered that the play be “stayed” until it was shown to be acceptable. This play was also on a sensitive subject, since the executed Barnavelt had been an influential statesman in the Protestant Netherlands, which had for many years been England’s closest ally. He had fallen out with Prince Maurice of Nassau (latterly Prince of Orange), who carried a degree of inherited status in what was otherwise a republic. Among their differences was religion, since Barnavelt had sided with the Arminians, a Christian sect at odds with the state’s dominant Calvinists. This would resonate in England, where there were similar divisions and this is probably why, even after Sir George Buc, Tilney’s successor, had licensed the play and the King’s Men had spent money acquiring properties, the Bishop of London briefly prohibited its performance (Dutton, 1991, 207).
When we review the manuscript we can see the care Buc had taken. As T. H. Howard‐Hill describes it:
Buc read the manuscript pencil in hand, marking passages for scrutiny at another time in a variety of ways. Once the drift of the play was clear in his mind he went back to the manuscript again, paying particular attention to the passages he had previously marked in pencil. Some pencil markings he did not pursue; others elicited more emphatic ink crosses, marginal deletions, crossing out, and interlineations and … [a] well‐known marginal note … I like not this. The second reading need not have been achieved at a single sitting, nor need Buc’s markings have been inserted without consultation with the scribe, acting for the authors.
(Fletcher and Massinger, 1980, ix–x)
All of this shows Buc’s careful attention to numerous issues, including references to persons of note in both England and the Netherlands during Barnavelt’s career (including both Queen Elizabeth and King James), to religious affairs, and various other matters. A good example is a passage during Barnavelt’s trial (lines 2343–55 in Howard‐Hill’s cited edition) in which he draws analogies between what was happening in the Netherlands and Augustus Caesar’s transformation of the Roman republic into a monarchy, warning (with a blunt “you can apply this”) against a time “when too late you see this government / Chained to a monarchy” (2349, 2353–4). It is a clear reference to Prince Maurice’s supposed ambitions. Buc tried to make it acceptable. He crossed out the provocative “you can apply this” and “monarchy,” but made several suggestions of his own. Only latterly did he mark the whole passage for deletion, apparently having decided that it could not be redeemed, something that rarely happens in the text. But he had worked hard to save it and evidently satisfied even the Bishop of London, since the play was shortly allowed to be performed.
The “well‐known marginal note” to which Howard‐Hill refers relates to the play’s marked antipathy to Prince Maurice, which Buc monitored closely, finally snapping at lines 385–403, where he wrote in the margin “I like not this: neither do I think that the prince was thus disgracefully used. Besides, he is too much presented” (Dutton, 1991, Plate 9). This shows sensitivity to the status of a man who was virtually ruler of a friendly foreign state, something Masters of the Revels evidently kept their eyes on – they were not supposed to allow depictions of “living Christian monarchs” at all. But it also reflects Buc’s personal knowledge of the people and circumstances of the play, since in 1601 he had been sent on a diplomatic mission to the Netherlands, carrying personal instructions from Queen Elizabeth and Sir Robert Cecil to Prince Maurice and other principals who appear in the play. Like Tilney, he was no faceless bureaucrat. Like Tilney too he owed his appointment as Master of the Revels (against strong competition from the dramatist John Lyly) to the patronage of Lord Admiral Howard (see p. 129). And he was a historian of some note. His account of the 1596 Cadiz expedition under Howard appeared in John Stow’s Annals (1601). The first work under his own name was Daphnis Polystephanos: an Eclog Treating of Crowns, and of Garlands, a poem honoring James I’s coronation and celebrating the king’s ancestors. Later published work included his “Third University of England,” printed as an appendix to the 1615 continuation of the Annals, and surveying the subjects – the arts, sciences, and professions (law, divinity, medicine) – which can be studied in London, even though the city boasted no university.
Buc’s most important works, however, were not published in his lifetime and some have not survived at all. Most important of these is a revisionist History of King Richard the Third, a much more sympathetic account than the one we know from Sir Thomas More and Shakespeare (Buck, 1982). The Baron was a massive historical review of English titles and offices, but only some notes towards it have survived. We also know he wrote an “art of revels,” but none of that survives. It suggests, however, that he saw his position as Master of the Revels as something that involved far more than simply importing the best commercial fare available.
Tilney continued in office until he died in 1610 and so would have licensed the great majority of Shakespeare’s plays; Buc probably only licensed The Tempest, Henry VIII, The Two Noble Kinsmen, and the lost Cardenio. Tilney probably therefore had some involvement in what is usually regarded as the clearest case of censorship among Shakespeare’s own works. When his Richard II was published in 1597 it did not include what is usually called the Parliament Scene, some 163 lines of Act 4 Sc.1 (from Northumberland’s “May it please you, lords, to grant the Commons’suit?” to Richard’s “Conveyors are you all, / That rise thus nimbly by a true king’s fall,” including the sequence where the fallen king examines his face in a mirror, which he then breaks). This passage did not appear until the fourth printing of the play, in 1608, when some copies carried a title‐page which announced “With new additions of the Parliament Scene, and the deposing of King Richard.”
Why the passage did not appear earlier is less clear than often assumed. It may have been part of Shakespeare’s original manuscript but censored by Tilney. It may have been cut at the time of the 1597 printing. It did not go to one of the clerical censors who usually licensed printed books at this date – plays were often treated as ephemera like ballads, and the Master and Wardens of the Stationers’ Company vouched for them without a formal licence. So it may have been they who called for the cut, or the players might prudentially have cut it themselves. Conversely, the passage may not have existed at all in 1597 and been written around the time of the 1608 printing (“With new additions”).
One striking feature is that the “cut” is virtually invisible if you didn’t know it existed. In 1597 the text jumps from the arrest of the Bishop of Carlisle for high treason to Bolingbroke announcing the date of his coronation and the Abbot of Westminster lamenting “A woeful pageant have we here beheld” – the “pageant” logically being Carlisle’s arrest and Bolingbroke’s assumption of royal power. The 1608 text inserts a long display of Richard’s narcissistic self‐pity in which he sidesteps admitting to any crimes, but ceremonially abdicates and ponders on the new identity – or lack of identity – this confers on him. In a play where Richard is clearly deposed, and later murdered, why should this apparently innocuous passage have been singled out for censorship? By far the most convincing explanation is one advanced by Cyndia Susan Clegg, who notes that the “new additions” are indeed clearly a “Parliament Scene,” led off by Northumberland’s introduction of a “the Commons’ suit” – a motion from the House of Commons to the House of Lords – which seeks to confer legitimacy on the transfer of power (1997). In 1597, with Elizabeth’s long reign drawing to an inevitable end, there was neither an acknowledged successor nor an agreed mechanism for finding one. The suggestion that Parliament alone might have the authority of do this was one that Elizabeth was unlikely to find welcome. By 1608, when James I had three healthy children and the succession was secure, the issue was far less loaded and someone may have felt it was safe to reinsert the passage. Conversely, however, there is also the possibility that the play was old and needed an injection of new material, which would take the form of a virtuoso passage for the lead role, presumably played by Richard Burbage. Tilney would certainly have had to be consulted (and paid) either way – to allow censored material to be restored or new material added for the revival.
Although it is difficult to discern exactly what happened here, it is a salutary reminder that the Master of the Revels was a constant presence in the working lives of the players and their authors. A later Master, Sir Henry Herbert, certainly had a reserved box in each playhouse and it is likely that Tilney and Buc had them before him (Herbert, 214). And, in the way of early modern monopolies, they made a handsome profit from their royal authority. In the 1590s they charged 7 shillings (about a third of a pound) to licence a play for performance; by the 1620s this had become one pound. They also charged the owners of the playhouses for a licence to stage their shows – 5 shillings a week in the early 1590s rising steeply to three pounds a month by 1600 (Henslowe, 32–7 [“mr pd”]; 162. Herbert, passim). These were heavy taxes to carry, but they were the cost of doing business. The Masters of the Revels, and the royal authority which they represented, were what allowed the leading companies, like Shakespeare’s, to operate and flourish in the growing London market.
It was a symbiotic relationship, from which they both profited. As far as we can tell Shakespeare and his fellows recognized this fact and respected it. This impression may simply be down to the fact that the office‐books of Tilney and Buc have not survived, as that of Sir Henry Herbert has, at least in part (E. Collins, 2013). Had they survived, the situation might have looked very different. Herbert, for example, records the King’s Men performing an unlicensed play, The Spanish Viceroy in 1624 and resenting his peremptory order not to revive Fletcher’s The Tamer Tamed, a play that had acquired topical overtones by the 1630s (Herbert, 183, 182–3). But there is no record of any such behavior in Shakespeare’s time. They occasionally staged plays which caused some controversy, but in instances where Tilney’s own judgment seems to have been at fault. Jonson’s Sejanus, for example, incurred the wrath of the Earl of Northampton, and a lost play of Gowrie – about a well‐known plot against James when he was King of Scotland – displeased some members of the Privy Council:
the tragedy of Gowrie with all the action and actors hath been twice represented by the King’s players, with exceeding concourse of all sorts of people. But whether the matter or manner be not well handled, or that it be thought unfit that princes should be played on the stage in their life time, I hear that some great councilors are much displeased with it: and so is thought shall be forbidden.
(Chamberlain, 1939, 1.199)
But in neither case is there any suggestion that the plays did not carry Tilney’s licence, an offense which might have had serious repercussions, as indeed unlicensed performance of Eastward Ho! by the Children of the Queen’s Revels (Hamlet’s “little eyases”) had for Jonson and Chapman in 1605. That company had its own separate licencer (see p. 281). All of these instances probably reflect the tensions in the early years of James’s reign, where there was jockeying for power under the new regime, some of it by the Scots he had brought down with him. The licensing system operated by Tilney seems normally to have been effective in minimizing the overflow of these tensions on to the stage. In 1599 his regime had probably helped the Chamberlain’s Men to represent their performance of a play of Richard II (very possibly Shakespeare’s) on the eve of the Essex rebellion as a normal commercial transaction rather than an act of subversion (see p. 135).
In other words, it directly challenged the authority of the City to police playing, either in relation to playing places or in respect of censoring and licensing what was played. The 1574 Act of the Common Council robustly reasserted that authority (EPF, 73–7). It fulminated against “sundry great disorders and inconveniences [that] have been found to ensue to this City by the inordinate hauntings of great multitudes of people, specially youths, to plays, interludes and shows,” “talking of frays,” “evil practices of incontinency,” “inveighing and alluring of maids” and more; it speaks as if playhouses were the only sites for the transmission of the plague, if not indeed its cause. It then imposes the City’s own controls over what can be played and in what buildings, applying stiff fines for transgressions. And latterly it raises the issue of taxation: “every person so to be licensed or permitted shall … pay or cause to be paid to the use of the poor in hospitals of the City, or of the poor of the City visited with sickness, by the discretion of the said Lord Mayor and Aldermen, such sums and payments and in such form as … shall be agreed.”
Rather than submit himself to such constraints, Burbage probably felt he had no real option but to build outside the City. It was not that Shoreditch was lawless; like the rest of the Middlesex it was subject to the authority of the county’s Lord Lieutenant and Justices of the Peace. Since these were all crown appointments, however, they tended to view the regulation of theatre very much as the royal court saw it rather than as the City did. Nor would Burbage entirely avoid taxation by retreating to the suburbs; contributions to the upkeep or the poor (and sometimes the upkeep of local amenities, like roads) were a necessary cost of running a business like this. But it is likely that the rates of taxation could be negotiated lower in the suburbs, where the pressures of poor relief were much less, than they would have been in the City proper. Henslowe doubtless made similar calculations when building the Rose in the Liberty of Clink, which was also outside of the City’s jusrisdiction. By asserting itself so aggressively the City may well have denied itself a source of real revenue. The Act also imposed stringent conditions, bonds, and potential financial penalties on the innkeepers who already operated within the City. Strikingly, this does not seem to have affected their business as much as we might have anticipated. As we have already noted, they remained in business for more than twenty years after this date (see p. 117).
Though John Brayne’s first theatrical project, the Red Lion, antedated the Theatre by almost ten years (see p. 30), it has left very little trace, and the claim of the Theatre to be the first successful, purpose‐built commercial playhouse in England since Roman times can hardly be doubted. It stayed in business for over twenty years, despite crippling financial difficulties on the parts of Burbage and Brayne, who went into the scheme expecting to pay about £200 and finished up spending £700, most of it coming out of Brayne’s pocket. They went to law with each other (and on at least one occasion violence) over the money.9 Brayne died bankrupt in 1586 but his wife Margaret continued the fight (see p. 31–2). There was a separate running battle with the ground landlord of the playhouse site, Giles Allen (see p. 193, 223), both about the maintenance of other properties on the site and about extending the original twenty‐one year lease. There were also several riots and affrays associated with the Theatre over the years, in connection with which the City was not slow to try to exert some authority (EPF, 341, 342, 345–6; see p. 31). There was even an earthquake in 1580, though no damage seems to have been done.
Yet the Theatre survived. On April 13, 1576 Burbage signed the fateful lease with Allen. It seems likely that he employed his younger brother or half‐brother Robert, who was a fully‐qualified carpenter – trained for large building projects – to erect the playhouse. He himself, as a trained joiner (a less skilled woodworker), might well have been involved with the fixtures and fittings, though doubtless his theatrical experience (and that of Brayne, such as it was) must have informed the grand design. We have already seen something of the long modern debate about what inspired that design, which was to be, with variations, the template for all the public playhouses of the era (Orrell, 1988, 7–29). Some have argued that it was based on the courtyard structures of the inns which the players had long used, both in the City and on their travels. We saw one in use in the Queen’s Men’s affray in Norwich: an open yard where a makeshift stage could be erected, overlooked by galleries (possibly two tiers of them) on two or three sides, which gave access to the inn’s accommodation. Another possible model was the quasi‐circular buildings used for animal‐baiting, which certainly looked like the theatres from the outside, though internal arrangements were very different.
Yet another argument, most vigorously propounded by John Orrell, is that the main structures of the theatres were inspired by classical models, familiar to the Elizabethans through Sebastiano Serlio’s Architettura, published in various parts between 1537 and 1575 (Orrell 1983; and 1988, 150–63). Burbage and Brayne would not have been set on a minute imitation of such models, but might have worked in the general spirit of what Serlio described, as mediated through the carpentry techniques of their day. It is certainly the case that foreign visitors like Johannes De Witt compared the theatres they saw to Roman precedents: “it [the Swan playhouse] seems to represent the general notion of Roman work” (EPF, 441; see p. 97–8). In all probability multiple inspirations guided Burbage and Brayne in their final design.
Limited archeological excavations between 2008 and 2011 have revealed some details that we could previously only guess at (Bowsher, 2012, 55–62). It was a timber‐framed building that seemed round, but which actually had fourteen sides and seems to have been about about 72 feet across (21.95m). These figures are strikingly similar to those of the Rose, whose foundations have been more extensively excavated, which suggests that Henslowe may deliberately have attempted to copy the Burbage/Brayne model (see Bowsher, 2012, 68–80; and Bowsher and Miller, 2009, 32–67. All measurements here come from these two works). The yard at the Rose was about 48 feet (14.63m) across, leaving around 12 feet on all sides for galleries (3.66m), which members of the audience could pay extra to use; these shielded them from the elements and some had seating – unlike the “pit” or “yard” where the lowest‐paying “groundlings” stood. The Theatre excavations have shown that its lowest galleries were actually 12 feet 6 inches deep (3.81m), and we know from other evidence that a total of three tiers of galleries surrounded the yard, one above the other, the top one being covered by a tile roof (see next paragraph). The stage itself, like the 1587 Rose, does not appear to have had a roof, leaving it as open to the elements as the pit and significantly limiting any possibility of spectacular “descent” scenes. But it also meant that there would be no pillars holding up a roof – and obstructing the sight‐lines.
The main timbers of the playhouse were presumably oak, possibly set on foundations of brick; the walls would then be constructed of lath and plaster (made of sand and lime), which we know Burbage and Brayne spent money on. We know little for certain about the stage and its furnishings, but again the evidence from the Rose is suggestive. Its stage was something of an irregular trapezoid, about 26 feet wide (7.92m) at the front and some 38 feet (11.58m) at its widest.10 We do not know how deep the stage was, but at the Fortune it projected to the middle of the yard, so similar proportions here would make it 24 feet deep (7.32m). If the stage of the Theatre was indeed of such dimensions, it would have left at least 5 feet (1.52m) on either side (and considerably more nearer the front) between it and the galleries, such that the “groundlings” of the pit crowded up to it on three sides. We owe confirmation of the three tiers galleries all around the pit to a German visitor in 1585, Samuel Kiechel, who commented on the “daily comedies” in the city, adding “There are some peculiar houses that are so made as to have about three galleries over one another so that a great number of people always come in to see such entertainments” (EPF, 410) We infer tiles on the roof from the fact that no thatching was paid for in the construction, as it was in the Globe.
The fact that the Red Lion apparently had a trapdoor makes it reasonable to suppose that the Theatre had at least one, though none of the surviving plays that we can safely assume were written for it actually calls for it. One play that has (presumably) not survived, but may well have called for a trap, was the version of Hamlet which Thomas Lodge mentioned in 1596, featuring a pale‐vizarded “ghost which cried so miserably at the Theatre, like an oyster‐wife, Hamlet, revenge” (Lodge, 56).11 All three versions of Shakespeare’s Hamlet require the Ghost to call from “under the stage” (Scene 1.5 in modern editions) and it is widely assumed that it enters and exits via a trap. Similarly, Titus Andronicus would require a trap for the pit in which Bassianus’s body is thrown and into which Martius and Quintus fall (2.3). That play almost certainly antedates the Chamberlain’s Men’s residence at the Theatre but, given its long popularity, would likely have joined the repertoire there.
All the surviving plays identifiable with the Theatre are by Shakespeare.12 Their first performances are taken to have fallen between 1594 and April 1597, when his company vacated the playhouse. It seems likely that the following plays – at least in their original forms – had been staged elsewhere by other companies, before the Chamberlain’s Men occupied the Shoreditch playhouse: The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew, the Henry VI plays, Richard III, and Titus Andronicus. So their new repertory at the Theatre perhaps comprised The Comedy of Errors(though see below, under Gray’s Inn), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Richard II, Romeo and Juliet, King John, The Merchant of Venice, 1 and 2 Henry IV, and just possibly Much Ado About Nothing. Love’s Labour’s Lost might also first have been performed there, though many date it earlier; and the 1598 text explicitly tells us that the version we have has been revised from the original.
None of these calls for more than two entrances or exits (cf. the two doors on the Swan drawing: p. Frontispiece) or anything resembling descent machinery. One apparent requirement is for an upper acting space. I discuss the most famous instance, that in Romeo and Juliet, elsewhere (see p. 111, 235), but assuming the company had taken over the Henry VI plays, they too needed such a facility.13 In Richard II (3.3 folio text) a stage direction reads “Parley without, and answer within: then a flourish. Enter on the wallsRichard, Carlisle, Aumerle, Scroop, Salisbury.” The trumpeters earn their keep with a summons to negotiate, an answer, then a combined flourish to announce the king, who is on the walls, aloft. Later he descends, with exaggerated self‐pity: “Down, down I come, like glistering Phaeton” (178). But he disappears for four lines of dialogue before Bolingbroke kneels, saying “My gracious lord” (189). This has presumably been enough for Richard to take a staircase down, linking the upper playing space to the main stage. Similarly in 3.5 Romeo and Juliet, Juliet “goeth down from the window” [Q1], not by the rope‐ladder (fashioned from the nurse’s “cords”) which Romeo had athletically used, but by the staircase.
The upper stage was most likely part of a gallery of sorts in an upper level of the tiring house at the rear of the stage, fit to serve as a window, balcony or castle walls. The “attiring‐house, or place where the players make them ready” was the hub of the stage, from which all action on it flowed (EPF, 362). It was almost invariably the place from which the actors entered, whether through doors on the main stage or “above,” and where they stored costumes, properties and playbooks – though we have very little information about its internal arrangements. As the Richard II example shows, as many as five players could fit on the upper stage, but dialogue never involves more than two of them at once, so there was probably little space in which to move around and stay visible from ground level while doing so. If the Theatre contained a lords’ room or rooms, their use might have limited space on the upper stage, but we have no evidence that it did (see p. 234).
William Lambarde attests that a version of the penny‐by‐penny entrance system was in operation here, with each section of the playhouse handled separately, thus ensuring (by Shakespeare’s day) that James Burbage‘s distinct portion of the take as sole proprietor was accounted for. In the second edition of his Perambulation of Kent (1596) Lambarde explains how pilgrims were not able to avoid paying to see a shrine, “no more than such as go to Paris Garden, the Bell Savage, or Theatre, to behold bear baiting, interludes or fence play, can account of any pleasant spectacle unless they first pay one penny at the gate, another at the entry of the scaffold [i.e. stage] and the third for a quiet standing” (ES, 2: 359). This differs slightly from the system Thomas Platter described in 1599, but the principle is very similar (see p. 159). The most striking difference lies in the phrase “quiet standing,” for which a third penny would be paid. Platter is quite explicit that there was seating in the galleries in the playhouses he described (including the Swan), of progressively higher comfort. Lambarde seems to suggest that what you were paying extra for at the Theatre (and at a city inn like the Bell Savage) was private standing space, rather than a seat; a gallery is, after all “A covered space for walking in” (OED, n. 1), rather than for sitting. Probably this is something that changed over time. The amount of seating available seems to have been a measure of the upmarket development of the playhouses. At the early Theatre, seating seems to have been distinctly the exception.
No description of the Theatre speaks of a “heavens” or canopy covering the stage, and modern excavations seem to confirm that it did not have one. Such features were certainly built into the Globe and the Fortune, and apparently added to the Rose when it was refitted before its use by Strange’s Men (p. 62). Their primary function was to keep the playing area dry from rain during performances, though there was nothing to protect the audiences in the yard. But they had an important secondary function in allowing ascent / descent machinery to be installed, making it possible for deities miraculously to appear and bodies to be winched up and down. Such effects can be found in many Jacobean plays, but none has been identified with a Theatre play.
Q1 Romeo and Juliet seemingly provides evidence of a discovery space at the Theate, though it appears to have been used quite sparingly there. The Elizabethans did not use this term, but their stage directions make clear that some such option was sometimes available to them. By a discovery space I mean a curtained‐off opening in the tiring house wall, probably mid‐way between the doors at either end of that wall, which were themselves towards the edges of the stage. Behind the opening was quite a shallow recess, probably itself hung with curtains or wall‐hangings; it could be accessed from within the tiring house and so possibly used as an alternative door, or as a route through which substantial properties, such as beds, could be taken on to the main stage. As I shall show in all of Shakespeare’s stages where it is relevant, the discovery space was only used occasionally and little action took place within it. It was mainly a “show” space, in which a tableau could be posed or a character shown in an enclosed space.14
When, in Q1 Romeo and Juliet, Juliet first drinks the Friar’s “distillèd liquor,” “She falls upon her bed within the curtains” (end of 4.3). This suggests that the bed was positioned at the front of the space, so that she could fall directly on it, letting the curtains fall shut to conclude the scene; she is found there two scenes later, when the Nurse opens the curtains. All that is required is that Juliet be seen there; there is no suggestion that other characters enter the space. We may infer – though the text is far less clear – that the discovery space also represents “the tomb” (i.e. vault) in which Juliet is laid to rest. First, “Paris strews the tomb with flowers” but this must be done outside the tomb, since he has neither the “mattock and a crow of iron” (Q1) nor the “crow and spade” (Q2) which Romeo and Friar Laurence respectively bring to open it. Indeed, Q1 makes it explicit that “Romeo opens the tomb,” presumably with a show of difficulty. Paris confronts Romeo before he can enter the tomb and is killed in the fight that follows. His last wish is “lay me with Juliet” (5.3.73), to which Romeo agrees.
The precise deployments here are difficult to determine. Juliet is presumably lying on a dias or sarcophagus; Paris must lie on something similar, and both must be visible. Romeo dies kissing Juliet: “Falls.” Friar Laurence finds Romeo first and Paris second, then “Juliet rises.” She then “stabs herself and falls.” If this does indeed happen within a discovery space (which has been doubted, though alternative stagings pose at least as many problems), it is as much action as Shakespeare ever scripted for one. The Prince commands “seal up the mouth of outrage for awhile” (Q2, 5.3.216) and this is often read as a cue to draw the curtains, effectively removing the bodies from the stage – assuming they have all fallen backwards of that line. Q1, however, casts some doubt on that; here the Prince says “Come, seal your mouths of outrage for a while,” asking people to cease their laments while they establish exactly what has happened. It is not impossible that both senses are operative: the curtains are drawn and people allow the Prince to examine the witnesses. Even by Shakespeare’s standard, this would be a busy double meaning. But it is the best explanation we have.
One thing commentators did leave an unambiguous record of – even its puritan critics – is that the Theatre was an impressive building. The very choice of its name, as we have observed, was intended to evoke the classical Roman playing spaces of that name, and its appearance also did so. The Dutch visitor, Johannes De Witt, accurately described the four playhouses he saw around 1596 as “amphi‐theaters” or double‐theaters; as George Puttenham noted this was the classical usage for playhouses fully in the round: “Their theaters … sumptuously built with marble & square stone in form all round …were called Amphitheaters” (2007, 1.17.29). De Witt was particularly impressed by the newest he saw, the Swan and remarked on its “wooden columns which, on account of the colour of marble painted on them, can deceive even the most acute, whose form, at least … seems to represent the general notion of Roman work” (EPF, 441). A foreign nobleman quoted by E. K. Chambers made the same Roman connection with what was evidently the Globe: “Monday 3 July 1600. We heard an English play. The theatre was built in the manner of the ancient Romans, out of wood, and so formed that from every side the spectators could see the details most suitably” (ES, 2: 366; my translation).
We can readily tell what an educated man of the period might know of Roman theaters, from a section of Thomas Heywood’s Apology for Actors, where he wants to demonstrate the ancient dignity of his profession:
The first public theater was by Dionysius built in Athens; it was fashioned in the manner of a semi‐circle, or half‐moon, whose galleries and degrees were reared from the ground, their stairs high, in the midst of which did arise the stage, beside, such a convenient distance from the earth, that the audience assembled might easily behold the whole project without impediment. From this the Romans had their first pattern, which at the first not being roofed, but lying open to all weathers, Quintus Catulus was the first that caused the outside to be covered with linen cloth, and the inside to be hung round with curtains of silk. But when Marcus Scaurus was aedilis he repaired it and supported it round with pillars of marble.
Caius Curio, at the solemn obsequies of his father, erected a famous Theatre of Timber, in so strange a form, that on two several stages, two sundry plays might be acted at once, and yet the one be no hindrance or impediment to the other; and when he so pleased the whole frame was artificially composed to meet in the midst, which made an amphi‐theater.
Pompey the great … saw in the city Mitylene a theatre of another form, and after his … return to Rome, he raised one after the same pattern, of free stone, of that vastness and receipt [capacity], that within his spaciousness it was able at once to receive fourscore thousand people, everyone to sit, see and hear … Julius Caesar … exceeded him in his famous architecture. He raised an amphi‐theater, Campo Martio, in the field of Mars, which as far excelled Pompey’s as Pompey’s did exceed Caius Curio’s … for the bases, columns, pillars, and pyramids were all of hewed marble, the coverings of the stage, which we call the heavens (where upon any occasion their gods descended) were geometrically supported by a giant‐like Atlas, whom the poets for his astrology feign to bear heaven on his shoulders, in which an artificial sun and moon of extraordinary aspect and brightness had their diurnal and nocturnal motions; so had the stars their true and celestial course; so had the spheres, which in their continual motion made a most sweet and ravishing harmony. Here were the elements and planets in their degrees, the sky of the moon, the sky of Mercury, Venus, Sol, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn; the stars, both fixed and wandering: and above all these, the first mover, or primum mobile, there were the 12 signs; the lines equinoctial and zodiacal, the meridian circle, or zenith, the horizon circle or hemisphere, the zones torrid and frozen, the poles arctic and antarctic, with all other tropics, orbs, lines, circles, the solstitium and all other motions of the stars, signs, and planets. In brief, in that little compass were comprehended the perfect model of the firmament, the whole frame of the heavens, with all grounds of astronomical conjecture. From the roof grew a louvre, or turret, of an exceeding altitude, from which an ensign of silk waved continually: Pendebant vela Theatro [sails hung from the theater] … In the principal galleries were special remote, selected & chosen seats for the emperor, patres conscripti [senators], dictators, consuls, praetors, tribunes, triumviri, decemviri, aediles, curules, and other noble officers among the senators; all other rooms were free for the plebe, or multitude. (Apology for Actors, D2r–D3v)
Of course the London playhouses did not seat eighty thousand (3,000 is several times given as the capacity of the Globe), nor were they built in marble; and Heywood omits to mention that Caesar’s “theater” was built as much for sports and games as for acting. But there were correspondences. The English outdoor playhouses all adopted the amphitheater model, the evolution of which Heywood is careful to trace; they thus ensured that “everyone [could] … see and hear” (if not sit), which was not the case with all theatre designs. Some Roman seats were reserved for the aristocracy, while all other rooms were free for the plebe, or multitude – effectively the same division as created by the lords’ rooms and penny‐by‐penny payment. They may not have been built of marble, but parts of them at least were expertly painted to look like it.15 And, where there was a “heavens,” it was painted with astronomical and astrological signs, doubtless less comprehensive that that in the Field of Mars, but still tending to the same effect; when we remember that the space under the stage was popularly known as “hell” (see p. 137, Note 12), it is evident that the playhouses were meant to comprehend the three principal locations of the Christian universe. And Elizabethan playhouses also hung out signs or flags from a turret above the tiring house, when performances were in progress; the Swan drawing shows a flag, with a picture of a swan, flying from the highest place on the building (p. Frontispiece). All in all, it is hardly surprising that De Witt and others saw similarities with Roman theatres and it seems likely that, within their limited resources, Burbage and his successors deliberately tried to emulate them.
It is sometimes said that the English prefer to imagine their Elizabethan theatres austerely plain, like their medieval cathedrals. But we know that the cathedrals were once painted with vibrant color, which they only lost after the Reformation. This was almost certainly also the case with the playhouses. There is no specific evidence that the Theatre had such marbling paint twenty years earlier than De Witt, but even the puritan preachers saw it as “sumptuous” and “gorgeous” (though these terms were probably meant as reproaches); and it suggests something that a painter is on record as having regularly been paid in the playhouse.
It was presumably a tribute of sorts to the Theatre that within months it was joined by a neighbor, the Curtain, built barely two hundred yards to its south‐east. It is difficult to believe that the demand warranted a second playhouse, especially in such close proximity. We do not even know who built it, only that the site was owned by one Henry Lanman or Laneman; he may or may not have been the builder, but in 1585 he came to an arrangement with Burbage and Brayne whereby the profits of the two properties would be shared 50–50 (EPF, 348–9; Ingram, 1992, 227–36). This presumably made for a modus vivendi and, as we shall see, eventually provided Shakespeare’s company with an essential lifeline at a critical point in its history.
From the start, however, the two playhouses were commented on together. Their puritan detractors decried the uses to which they were put, even as they acknowledged that they were splendid buildings. One T. W. (Thomas White?) preached a sermon at Paul’s Cross in November 1577, crying “Behold the sumptuous Theatre houses …” while the following month John Northbrooke denounced them as “A spectacle and school for all wickedness to be learned in … those places … which are made up and builded for such plays and interludes, as the Theatre and Curtain is” (Treatise wherein Dicing, Dancing, Vain Plays … are reproved by the Authority of the Word of God, quoted in EPF, 337). The following year John Stockwood preached against “The gorgeous playing place erected in [Finsbury] Fields … as they have pleased to have called it, a Theatre” (339).
Little is known of the Theatre’s use in early years, except the financial problems of and litigation between the various parties. But as early as August 1577 we hear that it had been in business some time. It is likely, though Leicester’s Men continued to tour, that they used the Theatre as a London base, especially in summertime; but they did not have exclusive use of it. In 1578 we hear of a sword‐fighting prize contest being staged there; such events were very popular and a theatrical arena was a logical place to hold them. But until 1594 there would be no permanent occupation of the Theatre. Traveling companies would book to use it as it suited their schedules, so it made sense to book alternative fare like the fencing when it was available. At the time of the 1584 brawl at the door of the playhouse which led to a confrontation between Burbage and William Fleetwood (p. 31), it appears that the Queen’s Men were playing at the Theatre, while a somewhat lesser company, the Earl of Arundel’s Men were playing next door at the Curtain. The whole incident was nearly disastrous, since Fleetwood got a majority of the Privy Council to agree to “the suppressing and pulling down of the Theatre and the Curtain. All the lords agreed thereunto, saving my Lord Chamberlain [Lord Howard of Effingham] and Mr Vice‐Chamberlain [Sir Christopher Hatton]” (EPF, 345–6). Presumably Howard and Hatton – the officers who would be most sensitive to the theatrical needs of the Queen – eventually prevailed, since we hear no more of the matter. As we shall see, there would be other moments when playhouses seemed in danger of being suppressed and pulled down, but it did not happen until the Civil War. The link between the players and the court – and specifically those at the court who understood the practicalities of providing entertainment for the Queen – was always their key lifeline.
It must, then, have seemed an ideal arrangement for all parties when, in 1594, the Chamberlain’s Men settled into the Theatre. For James Burbage it gave him secure tenants, who would normally play in his house rather than tour. Moreover, the company included his son, Richard, which would hopefully take the edge off any business frictions between the landlord and his tenants. And it was one of only two companies with court privileges – along with the Admiral’s Men, who were likewise normally resident at the Rose. This did not cut off all competition from traveling companies making occasional visits to London, as before; the Curtain and, from 1596, the Swan were available to such “incomers.” But, for the Chamberlain’s Men, being as it were in possession gave them an advantage over the competition. They had the opportunity to make the higher profits on a more regular basis which we may assume came with London playing at this date; this in turn probably made them a desirable company to join, either for an established player as a sharer, as a hired man, or as an apprentice – issues discussed in the next chapter. Having the Theatre as a permanent base also gave them room in the tiring house to keep costumes, properties, and playbooks, allowing them to build deep resources in ways that companies constantly on the road could hardly ever have done. A potential downside is that they would need those resources, because they would have to stage a steady turnover of plays, old and new, as we saw with Strange’s Men.
So Shakespeare was critical to this new business strategy. He was expected to keep turning out the box‐office successes – the kind of plays that could be recycled time after time – for which he already had a track record. Naturally, he stuck to an extent to tried formulas. He had scored a lasting hit with his early revenge tragedy, Titus Andronicus, and this seems to have been one of the plays that the Chamberlain’s Men acquired. We have already noted the existence of a Hamlet in the company’s repertoire; if this was not indeed Shakespeare’s own work, he was to make the story his own within a few years. The sequence of history plays we now know as the First Tetralogy and which we usually follow the First Folio in calling Henry VI Parts 1, 2, and 3, and Richard III – about the disintegration of English power in France after the death of Henry V, England’s collapse into civil war in the Wars of the Roses, and its final delivery from chaos by the triumph of Henry VII at the Battle of Bosworth Field – had proved extremely popular and here again Shakespeare seems to have carried their performing rights with him into the new company.
The Epilogue to Henry V speaks of how:
Henry the Sixth, in infant bonds crowned King
Of France and England, did this king succeed;
Whose state so many had the managing
That they lost France and made his England bleed,
Which oft our stage hath shown.
(9–13)
In 1594/5 Shakespeare promptly set about writing a prequel to that earlier sequence, of which Henry V was to be the culmination. That Second Tetralogy, however – like the First – was probably never as neatly preplanned as the First Folio sequence of English history plays suggests.
Richard II (circa 1595) was perhaps the first serious drama he wrote for the company’s new base, homing in on the deposition and murder of a king which destabilized the course of English medieval history. This is, in effect, the starting point for all of Shakespeare’s English histories, barring only King John and Henry VIII. But any plan to pursue that history soon seems to have been blown off‐course by Shakespeare’s engagement with a long poem by Arthur Brooke, based on Italian novellas, Romeus and Juliet (1562); this engagement seems to have resulted in the writing of the tragedy, Romeo and Juliet, back‐to‐back with the comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Both borrow so much from Brooke’s poem that, as Brian Gibbons puts it “one might see them as a kind of diptych, portraying the attraction and repulsion of opposites – love and hate, light and darkness, wit and folly, action and dream – in opposed modes of tragedy and comedy, written close together about 1595” (Shakespeare, 1980, 31). Only then (circa 1596/7) did he return to the narrative of the man who deposed Richard II, Henry IV, though his real focus falls on Henry’s son, Prince Hal, the future Henry V. It is not clear if he always planned to spread that story over two plays, or whether the possibility only came to him when he was part way through what became 1 Henry IV. In either case he was probably again blown sideways by the enormous popularity that immediately attached to the chief comic character in that play, Sir John Oldcastle – and equally by the scandal which required him to change that character’s name to Falstaff (p. 194). The Merchant of Venice, a different mix of the serious and the comic, was written about the same time.