Shakespeare's Lost Playhouse
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Shakespeare’s Lost Playhouse The playhouse at Newington Butts has long remained on the fringes of histories of Shakespeare’s career and of the golden age of the theatre with which his name is associated. A mile outside London, and relatively disused by the time Shakespeare began his career in the theatre, this playhouse has been easy to forget. Yet for eleven days in June, 1594, it was home to the two companies that would come to dominate the London theatres. Thanks to the ledgers of theatre entrepreneur Philip Henslowe, we have a record of this short venture. Shakespeare’s Lost Playhouse is an exploration of a brief moment in time when the focus of the theatrical world in England was on this small playhouse. To write this history, Laurie Johnson draws on archival studies, archaeology, en- vironmental studies, geography, social, political, and cultural studies, as well as methods developed within literary and theatre history to expand the scope of our understanding of the theatres, the rise of the playing business, and the formations of the playing companies. Laurie Johnson is Associate Professor of English and cultural studies at the University of Southern Queensland, current President of the Australian and New Zealand Shakespeare Association, and editorial board member with the journal Shakespeare. His publications include The Tain of Hamlet (2013), and the edited collections Embodied Cognition and Shakespeare’s Theatre: The Early Modern Body-Mind (with John Sutton and Evelyn Tribble, Routledge, 2014) and Rapt in Secret Studies: Emerging Shakespeares (with Darryl Chalk, 2010). Routledge Studies in Shakespeare For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com. 16 Shakespeare and Hospitality Ethics, Politics, and Exchange Edited by David B. Goldstein and Julia Reinhard Lupton 17 Shakespeare, Cinema, Counter-Culture Appropriation and Inversion Ailsa Grant Ferguson 18 Shakespeare’s Folly Philosophy, Humanism, Critical Theory Sam Hall 19 Shakespeare’s Asian Journeys Critical Encounters, Cultural Geographies, and the Politics of Travel Edited by Bi-qi Beatrice Lei, Poonam Trivedi, and Judy Celine Ick 20 Shakespeare, Italy, and Transnational Exchange Early Modern to the Present Edited by Enza De Francisci and Chris Stamatakis 21 Shakespeare and Complexity Theory Claire Hansen 22 Women and Mobility on Shakespeare’s Stage Migrant Mothers and Broken Homes Elizabeth Mazzola 23 Renaissance Ecopolitics from Shakespeare to Bacon Rethinking Cosmopolis Elizabeth Gruber 24 Shakespeare’s Lost Playhouse Eleven Days at Newington Butts Laurie Johnson Shakespeare’s Lost Playhouse Eleven Days at Newington Butts Laurie Johnson First published 2018 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Taylor & Francis The right of Laurie Johnson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Johnson, Lawrence, 1967– author. Title: Shakespeare’s lost playhouse: eleven days at Newington Butts / by Laurie Johnson. Description: New York: Routledge, 2017. | Series: Routledge studies in Shakespeare; 24 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017021956 Subjects: LCSH: Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616—Stage history—To 1625. | Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616—Stage history—England—London. | Newington Butts Theatre (London, England) | Theater—England—London—History— 16th century. | Theater audiences—England—History— 16th century. Classification: LCC PR3095 .J56 2017 | DDC 792.0942/09031—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017021956 ISBN: 978-1-138-29633-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-09801-2 ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra To Angie, Charlotte, and TJ “Not the olden days again, Daddy—when will you write about the newen days?” This page intentionally left blank Contents List of Figures ix Acknowledgements xi Introduction: The Problem with Entries 1 Duopoly and Happenstance 6 “In the name of god, A men” 16 1 “be-gininge” 26 A Conceit for Documentation 31 Crewel Ironies 35 Blindness and Hindsight 43 2 “at newing ton” 53 A Place for a Playhouse 59 A Shape and a Name 73 The Latest Innovation 82 3 “my Lord Admerelle men & my Lord chamberlen men” 93 Beyond Patronage and Privy 100 Assembling the Companies 106 “As ffolowethe 1594” 113 4 “ƃ 3 of June 1594” 124 “at heaster & asheweros” 135 “at the Jewe of malta” 145 “at andronicous” 153 viii Contents 5 “at cvtlacke” 168 “ne–Rx at bellendon” 174 “at hamlet” 182 “at the tamynge of A shrowe” 191 Coda: Henslowe Draws a Line 205 Index 209 Figures I.1 Original entry in the Henslowe papers. Dulwich College MS VII f9r detail. © David Cooper and Dulwich College. Source: With kind permission of the Governors of Dulwich College 2 I.2 Dulwich College MS VII f1r detail. © David Cooper. Source: With kind permission of the Governors of Dulwich College 20 1.1 “Southwark Fair,” by William Hogarth (1734). Source: Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington 41 1.2 Thomas Middleton. Frontispiece, Two New Playes (London: Humphrey Moseley, 1657) 42 2.1 “London, 1593,” John Norden. Engraving by Pieter Van den Keere. Plate facing leaf E2v (page 28). Speculum Britanniae. Part 1 (London: Eliot’s Court Press, 1593). Source: Used by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library under a Creative Commons Attribution- ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-SA 4.0) 54 2.2 “Map of London Showing the Playhouses,” C.W. Redwood. Joseph Quincy Adams, Shakespearean Playhouses: A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration (Orig. Houghton Mifflin, 1917; Reprinted, Gloucester, Massachusetts: Peter Smith, 1960): front inset 55 2.3 Plan of Walworth Manor, 1681. CCA-Map/19. Source: Reproduced courtesy of the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury 63 2.4 Section of plan of Walworth Manor, 1681. CCA-Map/19. Source: Reproduced courtesy of the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury 65 2.5 Newington Butts in 1947. Section, Ordnance Survey sheet number VII.95 (five feet to the mile series, 1947 amendment, © London County Council). Source: Reproduced with assistance from the London Metropolitan Archives 66 x Figures 2.6 Detail from A Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster, and Borough of Southwark, 1746. John Rocque. Sheet D3. Source: Reproduced courtesy of MOTCO Enterprises. © MOTCO 2001 69 2.7 The location of the Playhouse enclosure in Newington Butts. Overlay on detail from A Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster, and Borough of Southwark, 1746. John Rocque. Source: Base image used with permission from MOTCO Enterprises 71 2.8 Site of the Playhouse, 1947. Overlay, Ordnance Survey sheet number VII.95 (five feet to the mile series, 1947 amendment). Source: Base image © London County Council. Overlay by Matthew Nielsen 72 2.9 Site of the Playhouse frontage, 2017. Source: © Google. Captioning by Matthew Nielsen 73 2.10 “Blackfriars Theatre: Conjectural Reconstruction,” by G. Topham Forrest. The Times, 21 November (1921): 5 80 3.1 Marlborough and Tottenham Park, separated by Savernake Forest. Detail of Plate 12. Andrews’ and Dury’s Map of Wiltshire, 1773: A Reduced Facsimile, ed. Elizabeth Crittall (1952). Source: Reproduced with permission. © Wiltshire Record Society 111 4.1 Title-page, A Knack to Know a Knave (London: Richard Jones, 1594). Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership, Phase 1, Oxford, Oxfordshire and Ann Arbor, Michigan, 2015. Accessed 5 December 2016 129 4.2 Title-page, Kemps Nine Daies Wonder (London: Edward Allde for Nicholas Ling, 1600). Source: Used by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-SA 4.0) 130 4.3 Richard Stonley’s Diary, 75v–76r. Folger Shakespeare Library MS V.a.460. Source: Used by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-SA 4.0) 142 4.4 Title-page, The Most Lamentable Romaine Tragedie of Titus Andronicus (London: John Danter, 1594). Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership, Phase 1, Oxford, Oxfordshire and Ann Arbor, Michigan, 2015. Accessed 12 January 2017 154 5.1 Title-page, A Pleasant Conceited Historie, called The taming of a Shrew (London: Peter Short, 1594). Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership, Phase 1, Oxford, Oxfordshire and Ann Arbor, Michigan, 2015. Accessed 25 January 2017 191 Acknowledgements It may be a strange accident of history that the year of Shakespeare 400 has given rise to this project, which seeks for the most part to push Shakespeare to the periphery for at least long enough that we might glimpse some of the back history his vast institutionalised shadow has obscured. I describe the background to this project throughout this book, with a special word in the Coda to describe the moment that inspired me to pursue a study of the eleven days that two companies were housed at the largely forgotten playhouse in Newington Butts, so I have not added a preface to repeat the story. Nevertheless, I do wish to acknowledge those without whom this project could so easily have been derailed at any moment. I am indebted to Julian Bowsher, Callan Davies, William Ingram, Gail Kern Paster, Andy Kesson, Roslyn Knutson, Sally-Beth MacLean, Matt Steggle, and Elizabeth Tavares, who each in their own way have provided wise counsel, timely interventions, fresh insights, and helpful feedback at various stages of this project.