The Theatre

• 1. Introduction

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  The Theatre, the playhouse built in 1576 on the grounds of a dissolved priory in Shoreditch, started a chain of events that would eventually give the world the Globe. Before it existed, there was nowhere permanent in England built solely for putting on plays. Actors worked inn-yards, borrowed spaces, borrowed goodwill. Then James Burbage and his brother-in-law John Brayne changed that, raising a polygonal wooden building just north of London's city boundary and opening it to paying audiences in the autumn of that year.

  How did a city ban on theatre lead directly to the construction of England's first purpose-built playhouse? Why did that playhouse end up housing the company that employed William Shakespeare? And how did a landlord dispute on a cold December night ultimately produce the most famous theatre in history? Those are the questions worth sitting with.

• 2. A City That Banned Its Players

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  In 1572, the Mayor and Corporation of London banned plays outright, citing the plague. Their concern was straightforward: plays drew crowds, crowds carried disease, and the city wanted no strangers clustering inside its walls. By 1575 they had gone further still, formally expelling all players from the city itself.

  The unintended consequence was a creative explosion just beyond London's reach. Players and builders turned to the liberties, those zones of uncertain jurisdiction that sat outside the city's formal authority. Shoreditch, to the north, was one such place. So were the Clink and Newington Butts, near the entertainment district of St. George's Fields in rural Surrey. These were the suburbs that the respectable city did not govern, and they were already notorious for brothels, gaming houses, and what contemporaries called licentious behaviour. Into this environment stepped James Burbage, with money advanced by John Brayne and a lease on what had been the grounds of the dissolved Halliwell Priory.

• 3. Building on Borrowed Money

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  Burbage married Brayne's sister Ellen in 1575, which made John Brayne not just a business partner but a brother-in-law. Brayne, who had already built the Red Lion, advanced the funds needed to get construction going. In return he took a portion of the profits and held an ownership stake in the property itself. The trouble was that the two men never wrote a formal contract, and that omission would haunt the enterprise for decades.

  Their debts to each other mounted throughout construction. One creditor was a man named John Hind, about whom almost nothing is recorded except that his arrangement with Burbage and Brayne included a clause requiring him to arrange players for the theatre. To raise money while the building was still unfinished, Burbage and Brayne actually staged plays inside the half-built structure, using the ticket receipts to fund further work. The Theatre is said to have cost £700 to construct, a considerable sum for the period.

  The design appears to have been adapted from the inn-yards actors already knew. It was a polygonal wooden building, three galleries surrounding an open yard, with a thrust stage extending from one side of the polygon. The open yard was cobbled, and standing room there cost a penny. A second penny admitted patrons into the galleries. A third penny bought a stool. One gallery, source unspecified, was subdivided into private compartments for wealthy and aristocratic visitors. The roof was tile; the other materials included brick, sand, lime, lead, and iron.

• 4. Companies, Shakespeare, and Royal Command

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  When The Theatre opened in autumn 1576, it may have first served Leicester's Men, the acting company of Robert Dudley, the 1st Earl of Leicester, of which James Burbage was a member. In the 1580s the Admiral's Men took up residence. Richard Burbage, James's son, was among their number, until a disagreement split the company and most of them departed for the Rose Theatre under Philip Henslowe.

  The decisive moment came in 1594, when Richard Burbage became the leading actor of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, who then made The Theatre their home. William Shakespeare, poet, playwright and actor, was in the employ of that company, and some of his earliest plays had their premiere on that Shoreditch stage. At Christmas 1594, Richard Burbage was summoned with two other company members, William Kempe and William Shakespeare, to perform before the queen at Greenwich Palace. As one account puts it: "Numerous performances before Queen Elizabeth followed, and Shakespeare doubtless often accompanied Burbage on many subsequent professional visits to one or other of the royal palaces." Richard Burbage's most celebrated role was the title part in Shakespeare's Richard III, a performance that held an obvious resonance with his own name.

• 5. Lawsuits and a Landlord

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  John Brayne died in 1586, and the financial disputes that had simmered throughout construction broke into open legal warfare. Brayne's widow, Margaret Brayne, and former business partner Robert Myles filed suit against the Burbages, alleging they had halted payments on the debt owed to Margaret after Brayne's death. Margaret and Robert arrived at The Theatre demanding half of everything inside it. Richard Burbage physically assaulted Robert Myles. The pair left empty-handed. Myles pursued two further lawsuits; both failed.

  The ownership of the lease itself was contested in a separate manoeuvre. Though Giles Allen was the landlord, a man named John Hyde legally held the lease and agreed to return it to Richard, Cuthbert Burbage, and Margaret Brayne for the sum of £30. Cuthbert then used a trusted businessman named Walter Cope to approach Hyde with a different proposal: that Cuthbert buy the lease outright and own it himself. Hyde agreed. With the lease now in Cuthbert's name rather than James's, the Burbages argued that John Brayne had never held any interest in the Theatre, and therefore Margaret Brayne had none either. She was squeezed out of the business entirely. At her death, unresolved lawsuits still hung in the air, and her will directed any prospective winnings to Robert Myles.

  The lease James Burbage had obtained from Giles Allen in 1576 was set for twenty years. When that term expired in 1596, Allen stipulated the playhouse could continue only for another five years, and only for theatrical purposes. Burbage contested the stipulation and launched a lawsuit. He died in the spring of 1597 before it was resolved, and his sons Richard and Cuthbert continued the fight. The Lord Chamberlain's Men, caught in the legal crossfire, were forced out of The Theatre by 1597 and moved to the nearby Curtain.

• 6. The Night It Came Down

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  On the night of the 28th of December 1598, the Burbage brothers acted. With William Smith providing financial backing, chief carpenter Peter Street directing the work, and ten or twelve workmen on hand, they dismantled The Theatre timber by timber in defiance of Giles Allen. The structure was moved piecemeal to Street's yard near Bridewell.

  When spring brought better weather, the salvaged materials were ferried across the Thames to Bankside. There, reassembled and rebuilt, they became The Globe. Giles Allen sued Peter Street in January 1599 for trespassing and for removing materials he had no right to take. He also attempted to bring suit against both Richard and Cuthbert Burbage. The original site in Shoreditch stood empty, its silence notable enough to draw a comment from a minor satirist of the day, who wrote of something "like the unfrequented Theatre" that "walks in dark silence and vast solitude."

  In August 2008, archaeologists from the Museum of London announced they had found foundation remains of a polygonal structure in New Inn Broadway, Shoreditch, believed to be the north-eastern corner of The Theatre. The site is now commemorated by two plaques at 86-90 Curtain Road, where a Foxtons estate agency occupies the corner with New Inn Yard. The remains hold the status of a scheduled monument.