- duced 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).]
A. INTRODUCTION
The detailed notices, which will form the greater part of this chapter, may with advantage be prefaced with some general observations upon the historical sequence of the theatres and their distribution at different periods over the London area. The earlier Tudor London knew no theatre, in the sense of a building specially planned and maintained for public dramatic performances, although Yarmouth had its 'game-house' by 1538, and a theatrum at Exeter was the scene of satirical farces far back in the fourteenth century. The miracle plays, not in London processional, were given in the open air, and probably on temporary scaffolds. Similar stages may sometimes have been used for the interludes, but these were ordinarily represented in the winter-time, and sought the kindly shelter of a hall.[1] In the provision of specialized buildings, the drama appears to have been anticipated by the ruder sport of baiting. Höfnagel's pre-Elizabethan map already shows on the Southwark side of the river the two rings, with open centres and roofed seats for spectators, which are repeated later on by Agas and by Smith. They stand in yards or gardens lined with dog-kennels. One is lettered 'The Bowll bayting', the other 'The beare bayting'. When the first Elizabethan theatres were built in 1576, it was the hall on the one hand, and the ring on the other, which determined the general structure of the two types of auditorium that came simultaneously into being.[2] The 'private' house, roofed and lit, and with its seats arranged in tiers along three sides of a long room, and the 'public' house, generally circular, with covered stage and galleries, and a central yard or 'pit' open to the day, co-existed for more than half a century, and finally merged in the post-Restoration type
- ↑ Mediaeval Stage, i. 383; ii. 184, 190, 380. It is, of course, doubtful whether the 'theatrum nostrae civitatis' at Exeter was permanent.
- ↑ Ordish, 12, attempts to affiliate the ring type of baiting-place and theatre to Roman amphitheatres, Cornish 'rounds', and other circular places used for mediaeval entertainments. But a ring is so obviously the form in which the maximum number of spectators can see an object of interest, that too much stress must not be laid upon it as an evidence of folk 'tradition'.
