Shakespeare

When Shakespeare arrived in London there were several familiar venues for theatrical performances. The oldest of them were the inns or, rather, large rooms within inns which would otherwise have been used for meetings or assemblies. There is a belief that inn-yards, with covered galleries all around them, were the first public theatres; but a moment’s consideration reveals the impracticality of such an arrangement. Inn-yards were places where travellers arrived, where horses were tethered, and where supplies were delivered: places of public ingress and egress. These are not the ideal circumstances for public performances. The only exception occurred in an inn such as the Black Bull, where there was an extra yard connected to the rear yard by a covered alley.

There must have been many more places for performance than are currently known, but a few have been recorded for posterity. The Cross Keys was in Gracechurch Street, where Lord Strange’s Men performed, and the Bell Inn was on the same street. The Belsavage was located on Ludgate Hill, the Bull in Bishopsgate Street and the Boar’s Head was on the north side of Whitechapel Street beyond Aldgate. It is not clear how much they resembled theatres rather than inns; it seems likely, given the continuities of London life, that they were close to the early nineteenth-century “musical saloons” or “music halls” where drink or “wet money” was served to paying customers. Certainly it would be a mistake to think of them as inns that simply put on plays as additional entertainment. The Boar’s Head, for example, had erected a permanent theatrical space on its premises, and for the Earl of Worcester’s Men “the house called the Bores head is the place they haue especially vsed and doe best like of.”² Some of the earliest companies employed, for a stage, wooden planks placed across beer barrels that had been roped together. The great companies worked in the inns, and one contemporary described “the two prose books played at the Bel-savage, where you shall never find a word without wit, never a line without pith, never a letter placed in vain.”³ These are precisely the places where Shakespeare learned his craft at first hand.

By the time of Shakespeare’s arrival, however, there were at least four large structures built as general resorts for entertainment in which the theatre took its place alongside wrestling and bear-baiting. The first ever recorded in London documents, the Red Lion at Mile End, had been constructed in 1567 by John Brayne, citizen and grocer, as a financial speculation. Since he was also brother-in-law to James Burbage, there may have been some family interest in profiting from various forms of public entertainment. James Burbage began as a player but, in the changed circumstances of city life, he became a noted theatrical entrepreneur and father of the celebrated actor who played many of Shakespeare’s most important roles. He was one of those skilful businessmen who seem to sense the movement of the time.

The growth of the city, and the increasing appetite for urban entertainment, presented Brayne and Burbage with an opportunity. The Red Lion sounds like an inn but it was in fact a permanent playhouse, attached to an old farmhouse. Its stage was 40 feet wide and 30 feet deep; there was a trap-door for special effects, and an 18-foot “turret of Tymber” was built above the stage for scenic ascents and descents. The coherence of its design suggests that it was based upon previous models, and was therefore not the first of its kind. It is sometimes suggested that the drama before Shakespeare’s arrival was coarse and rudimentary, complete with wooden daggers and bladders of ox blood. But that is not necessarily so. Of course there must have been much trash, as there has always been – trashy plays were known colloquially as “Balductum” plays – but it would be unwise to underestimate the skill and subtlety of early writers and performers. There is no progress or evolution in theatrical matters – the nineteenth-century theatre is signally worse than the sixteenth-century theatre – and plays now lost were no doubt excellent of their kind.