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Timeline

When was the “first” playhouse? Our project is wary of such a question: “firsts” can obscure longer histories and influences for commercial play spaces. Moreover, dates are not always fixed or firm for this period of history. We don’t know, for instance, when exactly the Curtain playhouse was built.

This timeline therefore offers a selection of theatrical events from the 1520s to the 1590s, indicating a long period of innovation and adaptation. It is by no means an exhaustive chronology, but rather a snapshot of some of the developments in playhouse building and playing culture over these formative decades…

1528

Henry Walton

Henry Walton built a series of stages in the late 1520s. One was a playhouse in Finsbury, in the garden of the printer John Rastell. Others were in the churchyards of All Hallows on London Wall and St Botolph Aldersgate, where they were set up for a summer’s length of playing, charging fees. There is no clear “starting point” for the commercial playhouse, but here we have clear signs that London had a commercially vibrant playing industry with a range of fixed playing places by at least the 1520s.

1540s

The White Horse

The haberdasher George Tadlowe hosted plays in his dwelling house and tavern, The White Horse, an early example of a commercial playing venue.

1557

The Boar's Head

In 1557, a “lewd play” called the Sackful of News was played at the Boar’s Head inn. The players were arrested for its unacceptable content.

1567

The Red Lion

The Red Lion was due to host a play, the Story of Sampson, in 1567, when issues with the carpenters and other work on the stage threatened to delay the production. Recent excavations have suggested the Red Lion stage this year was part of a wider and long-lasting multi-purpose complex. Watch this space!

1568

Trinity Hall

Trinity Hall had been used for years by 1568 for plays, weddings, and entertainments. The building was managed by the fraternity of St Botolph; the Hall sat on an upper floor (with two “little chambers” nearby, a buttery and a kitchen below. It measured 54 foot 8 inches east-west and 15 feet 8 inches north-south. A stained-glass window facing Aldersgate would have streamed colour over the performances. A “Casual Receipt” from 1568 details money paid by “diverse persons” for “standing” and “for the hire of Trinity hall for plays and weddings” and assemblies.

1572

Merchant Taylor's Hall

In 1572, bosses at the company of Merchant Taylors complained that “at our common plays and such like exercises, which be commonly exposed to be seen for money, any lewd person thinketh himself (for his penny) worthy of the chief and most commodious place, without respect of any other either for age or estimation in the commonwealth.” Their popularity was not limited to parents or scholars. So many spectators crammed in that friends and parents of the schoolboys “could not have entertainment and convenient places.”

1572

Rowland Broughton

Rowland Broughton signed a contract for the Dutton brothers (two professional players) committing to writing 18 plays in three years. This may have been for a company of children, and the contract was signed at the Bell (a prominent inn playing venue). (Broughton failed to deliver on this unsustainable writing challenge!)

1572

Statute Against Vagabonds

Any “Comon Players in Enterludes & Minstrels” and other entertainers who are not under license are to be deemed “Roges Vacaboundes and Sturdy Beggers.”

10 May 1574

Leicester's Men

A patent on this date allows the Leicester’s Men (“Pro Iacobo Burbage & aliis” ‘for James Burbage and others’) “to vse, exercise, and occupie the arte and facultye of playenge Commedies, Tragedies, Enterludes, stage playes, and such other like as they haue alredie vsed and studied, or hereafter shall vse and studie” and to do so “within oure Citie of London and liberties of the same.”

6 Dec 1574

Act of the Court of Common Council

The act forbade the “inordinate haunting of great multitudes of people, specially youth, to Playes, enterludes, and shows” and so “from henceforth no play, comedy, tragedy, enterludes, nor public show” could be staged at inns or elsewhere if money were to be collected, unless the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen had given permission and bonds given to the chamberlain of the City. The Act essentially adds stricter permissions on playing in the city of London, and so it has been identified as a catalyst in the construction of public playhouses (see William Ingram, The Business of Playing).

1575

Bel Savage

The four major inns begin to appear frequently in records from the early 1570s onwards: the Bel Savage on the north side of Ludgate Hill; The Bull on Bishopsgate Street; and The Bell and The Cross Keys, which neighboured each other on Gracechurch Street nearby. The Bel Savage and the Bull hosted fencing prizes in the 1560s and 1570s. In 1575, George Gascoigne writes, “What man hath mind to hear a worthy jest, / Or seeks to feed his eye with vain delight, / That man is much unmet to be a guest / At such a feast as I prepare this night. Who list lay out some pence in such a mart, / Bel Savage fair were fittest for his purse. / I list not so to misbestow mine art, / I have best wares; what need I then show worse? (Glass of Government, prologue).

1576?

Newington Butts

A playhouse is built south of the City in Newington by, it seems likely, Richard Hickes and possibly run in its early years by Jerome Savage. Laurie Johnson’s book, Shakespeare’s Lost Playhouse, explores this venue and its origins and functions.

1576

The Theatre, The Blackfriars

1576 offers a rare fixed date for two sixteenth century playhouses. James Burbage, John Brayne, and Margaret Brayne spent great sums on building The Theatre in Shoreditch (with John and Margaret Brayne laying some bricks themselves!). The enduring legal quarrels about this venue furnish theatre historians with a great deal of information about theatrical London from these years. In the centre of the city, in the liberty known as the Blackfriars, the choirmaster Richard Farrant took a lease on two rooms in the area. He knocked down a partition wall to create a larger venue and made it a “continual house for plays.”

1576?

The Curtain

The first print reference to the Curtain comes in 1577, but we don’t know when it was first built and used. It sits the other side of Holywell Lane to the Theatre and by 1585 the two venues were in a profit-sharing arrangement. The Curtain went on to be the longest-lasting of all sixteenth-century playhouses in London. Unlike The Theatre, it was a rectangular venue, more typical of the majority of playing spaces across these years.

13 Jan 1583

Paris Garden collapse

A collapse at the Paris Garden bearbaiting arena kills a number of spectators and leads to antitheatricalist complaints about commercial play in the city.

March 1583

Queen's Men License

The Queen’s Men playing company are formed by royal warrant, drawing together some of the most popular and experienced actors in England.

1587

The Rose

The Rose playhouse is built by Philip Henslowe on Bankside.

1592

The Rose expands

In 1592, Henslowe shifted the stage, altered the walls and galleries, and added pillars and a “penthouse shed” while expanding the pit at the Rose—just five years after he first built the structure.

19 Feb — 22 Jun 1592

Lord Strange’s Men are resident at the Rose

The Lord Strange’s Men’s residency at the Rose in 1592 offers the first known extended run of an adult playing company at a London playhouse—recorded in Philip Henslowe’s diary. The children’s companies at Blackfriars or St Paul’s offer alternative long-form repertories connected with playhouses in the 1580s.