The Indoor Theatres of London

Para1In the early modern period, London’s playing companies performed in three types of venues: city inns, purpose-built outdoor playhouses, and indoor theatres. As the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras progressed, people attended plays in greater numbers and in different types of theatres. By the time the theatres were closed by Parliament in 1642, several indoor theatres existed in London to serve elite audiences.

Locations for Plays

The City of London licensed four inns for the staging of plays: two indoor venues, the Cross Keys and the Bell, and two that put on plays in their outdoor coaching courtyards, the Bel Savage and the Bull. They used a temporary stage, and spectators stood around the stage or watched from the balcony spaces that surrounded the central courtyard.
Purpose-built playhouses in London started with The Theatre, erected by James Burbage in 1576. Playhouses were outdoor structures that could be round, rectangular, or polygonal around a central yard, with galleries of tiered seating surrounding the stage area. Each theatre was distinct in design.
Para2The purpose-built theatres were public venues, so any paying customer could see the play. Outdoor theatres were open to the elements and staged plays only during daylight hours. Between 1576 and 1642, a dozen purpose-built outdoor theatres operated in London. Many of them were very large, holding perhaps as many as 3000 spectators.
Indoor theatres began to become more popular in the Jacobean era, with at least four of these smaller, more elite theatres operating in London. They were about 25% smaller than a typical outdoor playhouse, and they featured benches rather than a standing area, with the benches being the preferred place to watch the plays unfold. Indoor theatres were closed to the elements and lit by candles for evening performances, charging a higher price for entry and catering to higher status patrons.
Plays were also performed indoors and by invitation only in the great halls of the Inns of Court, as well as at the various palaces where the Court was residing, including Whitehall, Hampton Court, and Greenwich.
Para3Maps of the locations of the London theatres can be found at Gabriel Egan’s Shakespeare’s London Theatres site and at the Records of Early English Drama site.

Notable Indoor Theatres

The First Blackfriars, 1576

Para4One of the first purposely designed indoor theatres was established by Richard Farrant, the master of child actors and singers for Children of Windsor and Children of the Chapel Royal. Farrant ran this theatre primarily as a commercial enterprise. The First Blackfriars acted as a boarding school first and a public theatre second. After Farrant’s death in 1580, it was closed and transformed into tenements.

The Second Blackfriars, 1600 and 1609

Para5This playing space operated from 1600–1642. While the theatre was started in 1600 by Henry Evans for the return of the Children of the Chapel Royal, it grew in popularity in 1609, when the Burbage family entered into an agreement that would allow the King’s Men, Shakespeare’ acting company, to have the theatre as their indoor venue. The boy-actor company that played at the Second Blackfriars provided clever, witty, and satirical comedies and content for the gentlemen audiences that attended the theatre. However, they stopped performing there in 1609. It was for this stage that Shakespeare wrote his late plays such as The Winter’s Tale, Cymbeline, and The Tempest.

Whitefriars, 1606

Para6The Whitefriars theatre was started in 1606 by Thomas Woodford. The theatre was first used by the boy-actor company called Children of the King’s Revels and later by the Children of the Queen’s Revels. These companies were poorly managed by Woodford until the spring of 1608, when they failed due to lawsuits against them. Local residents were not happy about this theatre on their doorsteps and released the statement that the playhouse in the Whitefriars precinct is not fitting there to be, nor tolerable (Bowsher 123).

Cockpit/Phoenix, Drury Lane, 1616

Para7In 1616, Christopher Beeston built an indoor theatre known as the Cockpit on Drury Lane, thus beginning the tradition of theatres in that area that continues to this day. However, in 1617, the theatre was attacked and partially burned by a riot of apprentices who attended plays at the outdoor theatre The Red Bull. Beeston soon rebuilt it and rechristened it The Phoenix, conceived as a competitor to the Second Blackfriars theatre. The Queen’s Men moved in to perform in 1617 after original plans of differing groups fell through and continued to successfully perform there until 1629.

Salisbury Court, 1629

Para8Salisbury Court was built in 1629 by Richard Gunnell and William Blagrave. It served as the final indoor playhouse functioning before the Puritan government shut it down in 1642. It was used by a variety of child and adult companies, including Queen Henrietta’s Men. Although Salisbury Court was used illegally after the government enacted laws against it, the theatre burnt down in the Great Fire of London in 1666.

Key Print Sources

Bowsher, Julian. Shakespeare’s London Theatreland: Archaeology, History, and Drama. Museum of London Archaeology, 2012.
Archer, Ian. The City of London and the Theatre. The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theatre. Ed. Richard Dutton. Oxford University Press, 2011. pp. 396–412.
Egan, Gabriel. The Theatre in Shoreditch 1576–1599. The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theatre. Ed. Richard Dutton. Oxford University Press, 2012. pp. 168–185.
Gurr, Andrew, and Mariko Ichikawa. Staging in Shakespeare’s Theatres. Oxford University Press, 2000.
Gurr, Andrew. Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London. 3rd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Gurr, Andrew. The Shakespearean Stage 1574–1642. 4th ed. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Key Online Sources

Audiences. Shakespeare’s Globe, https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/discover/shakespeares-world/audiences/. Accessed 13 Feb. 2024.
Bloomfield, Eleanor, et al. The Theatre (Draft). The Map of Early Modern London, University of Victoria, https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/THEA2.htm?showDraft=true. Accessed 13 Feb. 2024.
Egan, Gabriel, ed. Shakespeare’s London Theatres. De Montfort University and Victoria & Albert Museum, https://shalt.dmu.ac.uk/. Accessed 13 Feb. 2024.
Price, Eoin. The Cockpit. The Map of Early Modern London, University of Victoria, https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/COCK5.htm. Accessed 13 Feb. 2024.

Prosopography

Ian Jagersma

Ian Jagersma was a student at the University of Fraser Valley.

Janelle Jenstad

Janelle Jenstad is a Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of The Map of Early Modern London, and Director of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Beatrice Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools (Routledge). She has edited John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Elizabethan Theatre, Early Modern Literary Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, Renaissance and Reformation, and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She contributed chapters to Approaches to Teaching Othello (MLA); Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives (MLA); Institutional Culture in Early Modern England (Brill); Shakespeare, Language, and the Stage (Arden); Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate); New Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter); Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana); Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge); and Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (Routledge). For more details, see janellejenstad.com.

Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

Melissa Walter

Melissa Walter is Associate Professor of English at the University of the Fraser Valley. Her research focuses on early modern English drama and English and European prose fiction. She is the author of The Italian Novella and Shakespeare’s Comic Heroines (U of Toronto, 2019), and co-editor, with Dennis Britton, of Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Authors, Audiences, Digital Technologies (Routledge, 2018). Her work on English theatre and the European novella has appeared in several edited collections, including Transnational Exchange in Early Modern Theater (Ashgate, 2008), and Transnational Mobility in Early Modern Theater (Ashgate, 2012). She has also written about Translation and Identity in the Dialogues in English and Malaiane Languages (Indographies, ed. Jonathan Gil Harris. Palgrave 2012). At the University of the Fraser Valley, she is a lead coordinator of UFV’s Shakespeare and Reconciliation Garden.

Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

University of Victoria (UVIC1)

https://www.uvic.ca/

Metadata

Authority title The Indoor Theatres of London
Type of text Critical
Publisher University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series Early Modern England Encyclopedia
Source
By Ian Jagersma, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
Editorial declaration This document uses Canadian English spelling
Edition Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a
Sponsor(s)

Early Modern England Encyclopedia

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
Encoding description Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines
Document status published, peer-reviewed
Funder(s) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Mitacs Globablink Research Internship
Utah Valley University
License/availability
Intellectual copyright in this entry is held by Kate McPherson on behalf of the contributors. Copyright on the TEI-XML markup is held by the University of Victoria on behalf of the LEMDO Team. The content and TEI-XML markup in this file are licensed under a CC BY-NC_ND 4.0 license. This file is freely downloadable without permission under the following conditions: (1) credit must be given to the authors, EMEE, and LEMDO in any subsequent use of the files and /or data; (2) this availability statement must remain in the file; (3) the content cannot be adapted or repurposed (except for quotations for the purposes of academic review and citation); and (4) commercial uses are not permitted without the knowledge and consent of the authors, EMEE, and LEMDO. Neither the content nor the code in this file is licensed for training large language models (LLMs), ingestion into an LLM, or any use in any artificial intelligence applications; such uses are considered to be commercial uses and are strictly prohibited.