The Indoor Theatres of London Theatres of London, The Indoor Author Ian Jagersma Supervising Editor Melissa Walter Editor Kate McPherson Copy Editor Leah Hamby Senior Encoder Leah Hamby Encoding and Metadata LEMDO Team Copyright Holder (Content) Kate McPherson Copyright Holder (XML and interface) University of Victoria Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globablink Research Internship Utah Valley University

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Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Ian Jagersma, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

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In 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.

The 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.

Maps 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

One 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

This 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

The 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

In 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

Salisbury 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.