XVI
INTRODUCTION: THE PUBLIC THEATRES
[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 Playhouses at Bankside in the Time
of Shakespeare (Walford's Antiquarian, 1885, vii. 207, 274; viii. 55).
J. Q. Adams, Shakespearean Playhouses (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 Playhouse 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
