Districts in London Districts in London Author Kimberly Wallace Supervising Editor Kate McPherson 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 Early Modern England Encyclopedia EMEE

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.

 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Utah Valley University

Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a

 University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform

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Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Kimberly Wallace, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines

This document uses Canadian English spelling

 Document Types All documents in LEMDO are either born-digital documents or primary documents. Within those two general categories, LEMDO offers additional ways to categorize a file. Born-digital Born-digital documents are anything other than primary texts Critical Critical material, such as a general introduction or a textual introduction. Responsibilities Responsibilities Author A person, family, or organization responsible for creating a work that is primarily textual in content, regardless of media type (e.g., printed text, spoken word, electronic text, tactile text) or genre (e.g., poems, novels, screenplays, blogs). Use also for persons, etc., creating a new work by paraphrasing, rewriting, or adapting works by another creator such that the modification has substantially changed the nature and content of the original or changed the medium of expression. LEMDO uses the term author in two contexts: (1) to indicate the author of a primary work or document (such as Hamlet), and (2) to indicate the author of a secondary text (such as the Critical Introduction to <title level="m">Hamlet, by David Bevington). Editor A person, family, or organization contributing to a resource by revising or elucidating the content, e.g., adding an introduction, notes, or other critical matter. An editor may also prepare a resource for production, publication, or distribution. For major revisions, adaptations, etc., that substantially change the nature and content of the original work, resulting in a new work, see author. LEMDO uses the general term editor only in edition metadata and only to indicate when a person is responsible for editing all parts of an edition. Otherwise, use the more granular terms to describe the precise nature of the editorial role. Supervising Editor An editor who supervises the work of a student editor. Copy Editor LEMDO uses the term owner for the person who checks facts, quotations, and citations; may make formatting changes; may convert from one citation style to another; may suggest wording changes; and enforces conformity with the project style guide. Markup Editor A person or organization performing the coding of SGML, HTML, or XML markup of metadata, text, etc. Gloss needed. Copyright Holder A person or organization to whom copy and legal rights have been granted or transferred for the intellectual content of a work. The copyright holder, although not necessarily the creator of the work, usually has the exclusive right to benefit financially from the sale and use of the work to which the associated copyright protection applies. Normally the editor is the copyright holder for an LEMDO edition. EMEE Keywords Culture Learn about the customs, beliefs, and daily lives of people in early modern England. Daily Life London Published file. Updated metadata added two figures. proofed Review of article finished. Created File. Michael Best 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.

 Leah Hamby 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.

 Navarra Houldin 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.

 Kate McPherson 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.

 Kimberly Wallace Kimberly Wallace

Kimberly Wallace was a student at the University of Fraser Valley.

 LEMDO Team 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 https://www.uvic.ca/
Wenceslaus Hollar (1607–1677), Plan of London Before the Fire, state 2, variant. Courtesy of Wenceslas Hollar Digital Collection and Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.
London in 1600

In 1600, London had an estimated population of 200,000 people. These citizens and residents came from every social level, a huge number of trades, and many nationalities. The city and its surrounding communities had grown rapidly, doubling in size between 1550 and 1600. Though there were many different districts (or neighborhoods) which surrounded the official City of London, several stand out as particularly important in the drama of the period.

River Thames

Though the River Thames is not a neighborhood in which people worked or lived, it was central to the city’s life and character. It was a major factor in London as a place of growing business and commerce in the European world. The Thames provided an important port where goods from all over the world could be traded, bought, and shipped back out again. It was that center of commerce which led many international merchants to immigrate to London to build their businesses, creating a culturally diverse atmosphere of languages and customs.

Westminster and Whitehall

During the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I, the royal court would travel between the districts of Westminster (home of Westminster Abbey), Whitehall (the largest palace at the time), Greenwich, Richmond, Hampton Court, and Windsor Castle. The royal court moved from one location to another because the sanitation capabilities of each location would be overwhelmed by the large number of people which comprised the royal court. Many courtiers built grand houses adjacent to both Westminster and Whitehall.

Westminster Abbey was the coronation place of the Kings and Queens of England while nearby Westminster Hall was the king's principal palace according to chronicler John Stowe. Westminster Hall was built soon after the Norman Conquest by King William II, around 1100 CE. King Richard II remodeled the Hall, and in an ironic twist of fate, was himself the first to be tried there in 1399, shortly after it was finished. Westminster Abbey still stands and remains the site of coronations (most recently of King Charles III in 2023), but of the massive complex of medieval and early modern buildings once in the area, only Westminster Hall and the Banqueting House from Whitehall Palace survive.

Shoreditch and Bankside

In 1574 a law was created which prohibited theatres, which were growing in popularity, from being built within the city limits of London. Because of this law, many theatres were built just outside of London’s city limits in suburbs just north of the City such as Shoreditch or just across the river in Southwark to escape the regulations.

Shoreditch was the home of the first permanent theatre building, called The Theatre, which was built in 1576 by James Burbage and later used by his son, the actor Richard Burbage and his company. This same company eventually became The Lord Chamberlain’s Men and included William Shakespeare. Shakespeare became part-owner (a sharer) in The Lord Chamberlain’s Men. The company had a dispute about the lease of The Theater with the landowner, so the troupe took the building apart and carried the pieces across the Thames. They rebuilt the theatre in the Bankside district of Southwark and named it the Globe Theatre in 1599.

The company also performed plays at the Curtain Theater in Shoreditch, which is currently undergoing excavation by the Museum of London after its foundations were discovered in 2012.

Southwark

Located in the district of Southwark is Southwark Cathedral, but in the 16th and 17th centuries, the area was also an entertainment district, housing several theaters such as The Swan and The Rose (where Christopher Marlowe’s plays were performed), but also bear-baiting arenas and brothels. Using the vantage point of the steeple of Southwark Cathedral, Wenceslaus Hollar was able to draw a map of London before the great fire of 1666.

London Before the Great Fire, etching by Wenceslaus Hollar, 1666–1677. Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain.
Smithfield

Smithfield has a diverse history that goes back a thousand years to when Romans occupied Britain. The district had a plethora of natural resources, including open fertile fields, the freshwater Fleet River, and a natural protective border on the west side which made this a popular area to occupy. In 1123, the area received its first charter to build a priory (a small monastery) called St. Bartholomew the Great, also known today as St. Bart’s. Soon several other religious buildings were built around the town center of Smithfield just inside the city walls. St. Bart’s started a small annual fair meant to sell cloth, but the fair soon became renowned throughout Europe and attracted buyers and sellers from several different countries. The fair had gained so much popularity that by Shakespeare’s time it had expanded from being three days long to two weeks long. Playwright Ben Jonson immortalized the raucous atmosphere of the fair’s merchants, puppetry performances, music, crime, and food in his 1614 play Bartholomew Fair.

The network of churches and priories in Smithfield created the base of the modern medical system in Britain. It became a place known for medical research and study. Due to the large population and international visitors, people in Smithfield came in contact with a variety of diseases and diverse injuries, so patients were plentiful; these factors led to major medical discoveries such as the circulation of blood by William Harvey in 1628.

The open fields outside of Smithfield were the site of two important aspects of London life. The first was that Smithfield was a part of the execution triad in London, with the Tower of London and Tyburn being the other two. Smithfield was mainly the site for executions of religious dissenters.

The second use of the open fields was the meat market. Chronicler John Stowe’s Survey of London notes the division of the city into distinct neighborhoods, often associated with a trade: the brewers for the more part remain near to the friendly water of the Thames; the butchers in Eastcheape, St. Nicholas shambles, and the Stockes market; the hosiers of old time in Hosier lane, near unto Smithfield, are since removed into Cordwayner street labourers every work-day are to be found in Cheape, about Soper’s land end; horse-coursers and sellers of oxen, sheep, swine, and such like, remain in their old market of Smithfield. Up until the 1800’s, Smithfield was an open-air market for the selling and butchering of livestock. The meat market still exists today, though it has been rebuilt as an indoor market.

Key Print Sources Picard, Liza. Elizabeth’s London: Everyday Life in Elizabethan London. St. Martin’s Press, 2003. Porter, Stephen. Everyday Life in Tudor England: Life in the City of Thomas Cromwell, William Shakespeare, & Anne Boleyn. Amberley Publishing, 2016. Stowe, John. A Survey of London. Ed. C. L. Kingsford. Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Key Online Sources Best, Michael. Districts Within London. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria, 4 Jan. 2011. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/society/city%20life/citylondonparts.html. The History of Smithfield Market. Museum of London. 4 Apr. 2019. https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/collections/london-stories/history-smithfield-market/. Shakespeare’s London. The British Library. 2 Oct. 2015. https://www.britishlibrary.cn/en/articles/shakespeares-london/. Trickey, Alice. 10 Locations for Discovering William Shakespeare’s London. Guide London. 28 Apr. 2017. https://www.guidelondon.org.uk/blog/around-london/10-locations-for-discovering-william-shakespeares-london/.
Image Sources Hollar, Wenceslaus. London Before the Great Fire. 1666–1677. Etching. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Object number: 56.581.8. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/361738. Hollar, Wenceslaus. Plan of London Before the Fire. State 2, variant. N.d. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wenceslas_Hollar_-_Plan_of_London_before_the_fire_%28State_2%29,_variant.jpg.