XVI. Introduction: The Public Theatres

Book IV. The Play-Houses

The world the stage, the prologue tears,

The acts vain hope and varied fears:

The scene shuts up with loss of breath,

And leaves no epilogue but death.

Henry King.

[Bibliographical Note.—Some notes in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1813–16 by Eu. Hood [Joseph Haslewood] are reprinted in The Gentleman’s Magazine Library, xv (1904), 86, and in Roxburghe Revels (ed. J. Maidment, 1837). J. P. Collier, History of English Dramatic Poetry, iii. 79, has An Account of the Old Theatres of London, and chronological sections on the subject are in F. G. Fleay, A Chronicle History of the London Stage (1890). T. F. Ordish, Early London Theatres (1894), covers the Shoreditch and Bankside theatres ‘in the Fields’ other than the Globe; a companion volume on the urban houses has never appeared. The Bankside houses are also dealt with by W. Rendle, The Bankside, Southwark, and the Globe (1877), being Appendix I to F. J. Furnivall, Harrison’s Description of England, Part II (N. Sh. Soc.), and in Old Southwark and its People (1878) and The Play-houses at Bankside in the Time of Shakespeare (Walford’s Antiquarian, 1885, vii. 207, 274; viii. 55). J. Q. Adams, Shakespearean Play-houses (1917), is a comprehensive and valuable work, which reached me when this chapter was practically complete. I am glad to find that our results so generally agree. The chief London maps have been reproduced by the London Topographical Society and on a smaller scale by G. E. Mitton, Maps of Old London (1908). Some are also given as illustrations in G. P. Baker, The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist (1907). They are classified by W. Martin, A Study of Early Map-Views of London in The Antiquary, xlv (1909), 337, 406, and their evidence for the Bankside analysed by the same writer, with partial reproductions, in The Site of the Globe Play-house of Shakespeare (1910, Surrey Archaeological Collections, xxiii. 149).

The evidence of the maps as to the position of the theatres is obscured, partly by uncertainties as to the dates and authorships both of the engravings and of the surveys on which they were based, and partly by the pictorial character of the topography. They are not strict plans in two dimensions, such as modern cartographers produce, but either drawings in full perspective, or bird’s-eye views in diminished perspective. The imaginary standpoint is always on the south, and the pictorial aspect is emphasized in the foreground, with the result that, while the Bankside theatres, but not those north of the river, are generally indicated, this is rarely with a precision which renders it possible to locate them in relation to the thoroughfares amongst which they stand. This is more particularly the case since, while the general grouping of buildings, gardens, and trees appears, from a comparison of one view with another, to be faithfully given, it is probable that the details are often both conventionally represented and out of scale. The following classification is mainly borrowed from Dr. Martin: (a) Pre-Reformation representations of London throwing no light on the theatres; (b) Wyngaerde, a pictorial drawing (c. 1543–50) by A. Van der Wyngaerde (L. T. Soc. i; Mitton, i); (c) Höfnagel, a plan with little perspective by G. Höfnagel, from a survey of c. 1554–7 (cf. A. Marks in Athenaeum for 31 March 1906), published (1572) with the title Londinum Feracissimi Angliae Regni Metropolis in G. Braun and F. Hohenburg, Civitates Orbis Terrarum (L. T. Soc. ii; Mitton, iv); (d) Agas, an engraving with more perspective, but generally similar to that of Höfnagel and possibly from the same survey, but drawn after 1561, and assigned by G. Vertue, who reproduced it (1737), to Ralph Agas (L. T. Soc. xvii; Mitton, ii); (e) Smith, a coloured drawing by William Smith, possibly based on Höfnagel or Agas, in B. M. Sloane MS. 2596, reproduced in H. B. Wheatley and E. W. Ashbee, W. Smith, The Particular Description of England, 1588 (1879), and in G. P. Baker, The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist (1907), 18; (f) Bankside Views, small representations of the same general character as (c), (d), and (e), used as backgrounds to pictures and described by W. Martin in Antiquary, xlv. 408; (g) Norden, engravings in slight perspective of ‘London’ and ‘Westminster’ by P. Van den Keere in J. Norden, Speculum Britanniae (1593), from survey of about the same date (L. T. Soc. vii; Mitton, v, vi; Furnivall, Harrison’s Description of England, Part I, with notes on p. lxxxix by H. B. Wheatley, reprinted by L. T. Soc. in Record, ii); (h) Delaram Group, perspective views as backgrounds to portrait (c. 1616) of James I by F. Delaram (1620), reproduced by W. Martin in Surrey A. Colls. xxiii. 186, and other portraits probably based on some original of c. 1603; (i) Hondius Group, (i) drawing by P. D. Hondius (1610) in J. Speed, Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain (1611), as inset to map of Britain (L. T. Record, ii, with notes by T. F. Ordish; Baker, f. p.), (ii) engraving on title-page of R. Baker, Chronicle (1643), reproduced by Martin in Surrey A. Colls. xxiii. 187, (iii) engraving on title-page of H. Holland, Herwologia Anglica (1620), (iv) engraving of triumphal arch at coronation entry of James I by W. Kip in S. Harrison (cf. ch. xxiv), The Arches of Triumph (1604), all perhaps based on the same original or survey; (k) Visscher, engraving in perspective by Nikolaus Janssen Visscher (1616), ‘Amstelodami, ex officina Judoci Hondii’, with mutilated text from Camden’s Britannia, reproduced from unique copy in Brit. Mus. (L. T. Soc. iv, with notes by T. F. Ordish in L. T. Record, vi; also W. Martin in Surrey A. Colls. xxiii. 188, and in Ordish, Shakespeare’s London, f. p. and elsewhere); (l) Merian Group, (i) engraving in perspective by M. Merian in J. L. Gottfried, Neuwe Archontologia Cosmica (1638), 290, reproduced by Martin, 191, and Adams, 256, and copied in (ii) f. p. to James Howell, Londinopolis (1657), reproduced by Baker, 154, and (iii) R. Wilkinson, Londina Illustrata (1819); (m) ‘Ryther’ Group, (i) engraving in very slight perspective from drawing unfinished as regards the Bankside in Crace Collection, No. 32, without date, imprint, or indication of authorship, reproduced by W. J. Loftie, History of London, ii. 282, C. L. Kingsford, Chronicles of London, (1905) f. p., and Baker, 36, 125, 135, and ascribed to Augustine Ryther in 1604, but probably of about 1636–45 (cf. 4 N. Q. ix. 95; 6 N. Q. xii. 361, 393; 7 N. Q. iii. 110; vi. 297; vii. 498) in view of (ii) another version in Crace Coll., No. 31, with the Bankside complete, bearing the imprint of ‘Cornelis Danckerts grauer of maps’ in Amsterdam (c. 1631–56), and possibly by Hollar, who worked for Danckerts, and was in England 1636–45, (iii) map by T. Porter (c. 1666), based on (i) with later additions (reproduced L. T. Soc. v); (n) Hollar, engraving in perspective by W. Hollar (in London 1635–43), published by Cornelius Danckerts in 1647 (L. T. Soc. xix; section by Martin in Surrey A. Colls. xxiii. 194); (o) Faithorne and Newcourt, engraving in conventional perspective by William Faithorne from drawing by Richard Newcourt, published in 1658 (L. T. Soc. xviii; Mitton, vii). Of the various maps of post-conflagration London the most useful are that of Leeke and Hollar (c. 1666), of which a section is reproduced by Martin in Surrey A. Colls. xxiii. 191, and those of John Ogilby and W. Morgan (1677, Mitton, viii), John Ogilby and W. Morgan (1682, L. T. Soc. xv), and John Rocque (1746, L. T. Soc. xxxiv, xxxv, xxxvii; Mitton, ix; section in Martin, ut supra, 197). Rendle, Bankside, has attempted to indicate the sites of the Bankside theatres upon a reconstructed map based on Rocque, and Martin in Surrey A. Colls. xxiii. 155, 202, gives parts of the Bankside area as it now stands from the Ordnance Survey map (1896) and a plan of the Anchor Brewery (1909).]