Blackfriars Theatre

“ Any light pretext was sufficient to order an inhibition. In this particular instance it is difficult to account for any inhibition by the authorities. The innovation certainly referred to the competition of the child performers, although in Shakespeare’s time it was no innovation, the children having acted for many years previously. The Blackfriars Theatre was given up to the Children of the Queen’s Revels and the Children of the Royal Chapel and other boy companies, which the Queen encouraged not only by her presence at the Blackfriars Theatre but by allowing them several privileges. ”

“ The Vere Street Desdemona, we repeat, must be looked for in Killigrew's company, which commenced operations more than half a year before the rival theatre. It is true that some time before the opening of this theatre Davenant had been the responsible manager in regard to certain performances at the Blackfriars Theatre and elsewhere; but there is no reason to suppose that actresses took part in these entertainments; it is known, indeed, that the feminine characters in the plays exhibited were sustained by the young actors of the company—Kynaston, James Nokes, Angel, and William Betterton. ”

“ It was in 1598 that through his influence Ben Jonson obtained, after many rebuffs, his first hearing before a London audience, when "Every Man in his Humour" was brought out at Blackfriars Theatre, with Shakespeare acting one of the parts.
To suppose that such a man as this, in a town the size of Minneapolis, connected with a principal theatre, writer of the most popular plays of the day, a poet whom men were already coupling with Homer and Pindar,—to suppose that such a man was not known to all the educated people in the town is simply absurd. ”

“ Law, to whose interesting and valuable account of the Whitehall Palace I have been entirely indebted for the above description, alluded to the Blackfriars Theatre as being the scene of Shakespeare’s activities. There is not an atom of evidence to prove that Shakespeare ever acted on its boards or that his plays were produced there during his lifetime. The only evidence is that Cuthbert Burbage, the son of Richard Burbage, states that his father, in 1609 or 1610, placed deserving men, Heminge Condell and Shakespeare, at the Blackfriars. ”

“ This passage in “Hamlet” proves they were a thorn in the sides of the adult players, and for a brief period carried all before them. Many well-known dramatists wrote plays especially for these young actors. No record exists of their appearance at a public theatre. The boys acted chiefly at the private house known as the Blackfriars Theatre. The company of the Chapel Royal, and that of the St. Paul’s Choir, can only be regarded as of a good all-round amateur ability comparable with societies of our own times.
[Pg 183] ”

“ The royal theatre, Blackfriars, was the most nobly patronised of all the houses opened previous to the Restoration. The grown-up actors were the most skilled of their craft; and the boys, or apprentices, were the most fair and effeminate that could be procured, and could profit by instruction. On this stage Shakspeare enacted the Ghost in "Hamlet," Old Adam, and a similar line of characters, usually intrusted to the ablest of the performers of the second class. Blackfriars was a winter house. ”

“ The Globe survived, but will be found to have occupied during the Caroline period a distinctly secondary position to the Blackfriars in the economy of the King’s men. For this there was another reason besides the geographical superiority of Middlesex over Surrey. The acquisition of the Blackfriars, even though only for winter purposes, in 1608 was an acknowledgement of the advantages for adult companies of the ‘private’ or roofed type of theatre, hitherto used only by boys. ”

“ Of the London theatres he seems to have had an interest in the Rose, the Hope, and the Red Bull, as well as in the Fortune; but the evidence adduced by Mr. Collier to show that he also possessed a share in the Blackfriars Theatre, purchased from Shakespeare, is of modern fabrication. ”

“ Its "great" size may be inferred from the fact that there were ten rooms "above"; and its general excellence may be inferred from the fact that it was leased at £50 per annum, whereas Blackfriars, in a more desirable location and fully equipped as a theatre, was rented for only £40.
From an early seventeenth-century survey of the Whitefriars property (see the opposite page) , we are able to place the building very exactly. The part of the monastery used as a playhouse—the Frater—was the southern cloister, marked in the plan, "My Lords Cloyster." ”

“ Meanwhile, beaming old Rhodes, with a head full of memories of the joyous Blackfriars' days, and the merry afternoons over the water, at the Globe, leaving his once apprentice, Betterton, listening to Davenant's stage histories, and Kynaston, not yet out of his time, longing to flaunt it before an audience, took his own way to Hyde Park, where Monk was encamped, and there obtained, in due time, from that far-seeing individual, licence to once more raise the theatrical flag, enrol the actors, light up the stage, and, in a word, revive the English theatre. ”

“ The first was probably the theatre in Shoreditch; the second, opened in its immediate neighbourhood, was known as the Curtain; the third, built by John Burbadge and other of the Earl of Leicester's company of players, was the famous Blackfriars Theatre. These were all erected about 1576, and other playhouses were opened soon afterwards. Probably to avoid the penalties of the Act of Elizabeth, all strolling and unattached players made haste to join regular companies, or to shelter themselves under noble patronage. ”

“ But the most serious opposition in all probability came from the citizens and merchants living in the neighborhood. We know how bitterly they complained about the coaches that brought playgoers to the small Blackfriars Theatre, and how strenuously from year to year they sought the expulsion of the King's Men from the precinct. ”

“ Four of them were considered as public theatres, namely, The Globe on the Bankside, The Curtain in Shoreditch, The Red Bull in St. John's Street, and The Fortune in Whitecross Street; and three were termed private houses, one, for instance, in Blackfriars, another in Whitefriars, and The Cockpit or Phœnix, in Drury-Lane. As The Globe, however, and the theatre in Blackfriars were the property of the same set of players, only six companies of comedians were formed, or wanted, for the purposes of representation. ”

“ It is just possible that More also pulled down the west end of the Duchy Chamber.
By 1596 both the fencing-school and the butler’s lodging had passed from the occupation of Bonetti. One Thomas Bruskett had the former and one John Favour the latter. This is the year of James Burbadge’s great enterprise of the second Blackfriars theatre. Our first intimation of it is from Lord Hunsdon, in a letter to More of 9 January 1596. [1588] He has heard that More has parted with part of his house for a play-house, and makes an offer for ‘your other howse, which once I had also’. ”

“ In 1642 ‘public stage plays’ were suppressed, and on Aug. 5, 1655, Blackfriars Theatre was pulled down and tenements were built in its place. See Wh-C.
Nares, referring to Shirley’s Six New Playes, 1653, says that ‘the Theatre of Black-Friars was, in Charles I.’s time at least considered, as being of a higher order and more respectability than any of those on the Bank-side.’
1. 6. 33 Rise vp between the Acts. See note 3. 5. 43.
1. 6. 33, 4 let fall my cloake,
Publish a handsome man, and a rich suite. ”

“ A roofed theatre would not require a specially constructed ‘heavens’, as descents could be worked through the ceiling from a room above. There is no clear evidence for a lord’s room at any of the private houses. [1772] But there were ‘boxes’, at any rate at the Whitefriars. [1773] Evidence for seats on the stage has already been furnished. There is much to suggest that the audience was a more select one than that of the public theatres. [1774] Elizabeth cannot be shown [556] to have ever attended the Blackfriars, but Anne certainly did. ”

“ The Red Bull and the Whitefriars followed in the same area. On the other hand, the Rose had vanished, and the King’s men, although they did not desert the Globe, acknowledged the change of venue by taking up their winter quarters in the Blackfriars hard by. One result was that men who had ridden to the Fields and been ferried to the Bankside, now walked or drove in their coaches to the theatre door. ”

“ The chief members of this company, including Shakespeare, acquired shares in theprofits of the playhouse, but throughout his life Richard Burbage apparently reserved a very large share for himself 'ldle Blackfriars Theatre was not the only playhouse which James Burbage owned at his death. ”

“ James Burbadge was not destined to see the success of [508] his adventure. After all, he was prevented from establishing his theatre in 1596. Play-houses had just been suppressed in the City, and a number of the more important inhabitants of the Blackfriars disliked the idea of one being opened in their select residential precinct, where no common play-house had yet been seen. Farrant’s theatre, nominally intended for the private practice of the Chapel boys, was presumably regarded as not falling within the category of common play-houses. ”

“ Although a self-made man in every sense of the word,—although still a member of that despised theatrical profession against which the pulpit thundered, at which the decent citizen looked askance,—he was a distinctly marked personality, not to be ignored. He was part proprietor of the Globe Theatre, the Blackfriars, and the Rose,—he had house property in Southwark and Blackfriars, lands and houses at Stratford-upon-Avon. ”

“ Shakespeare's company had been acting at the Burbadges' theatre of the Globe since 1599,—as the Lord Chamberlain's till 1603; after that, as his Majesty's Servants. Now Shakespeare's company took charge of Blackfriars, as well; and, under their management, for about a month between December 7, 1609 and January 4, 1610 the Queen's Revels' Children, being reinstated in royal favour, resumed their acting at Blackfriars. On the latter date, the Children as reorganized, opened at Whitefriars under the management of Philip Rossiter and others ”

“ In December, 1593, Richard Burbadge, who, his father having died or retired, was then the leader of the Blackfriars company, signed a contract for the building of the Globe theatre, in which Shakespeare is known to have been a large owner. The Blackfriars was not accommodation enough for the company's uses, but was entirely covered-in, and furnished suitably for the Winter. The Globe, made larger, and designed for Summer use, was a round wooden building, open to the sky, with the stage protected by an overhanging roof. ”

“ The price of admission to this part of a public theatre, such as the Globe, was one penny. At the Blackfriars, a private theatre, there was no open yard. In Jonson’s play of “The Case is Altered” one of the characters explains: “Tut, give me the penny, give me the penny. I care not for the gentleman, I, let me have good ground.” The same dramatist, in another play, designates these spectators as the understanding gentlemen of the ground. ”

“ It is not likely that the Blackfriars did more than reproduce the conditions of a courtly hall. But the investment of capital in the Theatre and the Curtain was an incident in the history of the companies, the economic importance of which has already been emphasized in an earlier discussion. [121] It was followed by the formation of strong theatrical organizations in the Queen’s men, the Admiral’s, Strange’s, the Chamberlain’s. For a time the economic changes are masked by the continued vogue of the boy companies ”

“ Burbage's originality, however, did not stop with the choice of Blackfriars as the site of his new theatre; he determined to improve on the form of building as well. The open-air structure which he had designed in 1576, and which had since been copied in all public theatres, had serious disadvantages in that it offered no protection from the weather. Burbage now resolved to provide a large "public" playhouse, fully roofed in, with the entire audience and the actors protected against the inclemency of the sky and the cold of winter. ”

“ The theatre, where the children play, is on the hither side of the water; they play at three o’clock, but only from Michaelmas to Easter. Here it only costs half a shilling to enter, but for the other places at least half a crown. These play only with lights, and are the best company in London.’ [1054]
[370]
In addition to the Globe and the Whitefriars, the tale of seven theatres is probably made up by the Blackfriars, the Fortune, the Red Bull, the Curtain, and the Swan. ”

“ The first play which we can definitely locate there is Every Man Out of his Humour; but I have decided with some hesitation to treat Henry V and Much Ado about Nothing, for the purposes of these chapters, as Globe plays. [325] So far as we know, the Globe was the only theatre used by the company up to the winter of 1609, when they also came into possession of the Blackfriars. From 1609 to 1613 they used both houses, but probably the Globe was still the more important of the two, for when it was burnt in 1613 they found it worth while to rebuild it fairer than before. ”

“ One thing is certain, that in 1587 five companies of players, including the Blackfriars Company, performed at Stratford, and in his native town Mr. Collier thinks Shakespeare first proved himself useful to his new comrades.
In 1589 the Lord Mayor closed two theatres for ridiculing the Puritans. Burbage and his friends, alarmed at this, petitioned the Privy Council, and pleaded that they had never introduced into their plays matters of state or religion. The Blackfriars company, in 1593, began to build a summer theatre, the Globe, in Southwark ”