It’s been estimated
that by 1610
London’s total
theatre capacity
on any given night
was some 10 ,0 00
I
n 1567, London grocer John Brayne
embarked on a new business
venture. At a cost of about
£20, he built England’s
first theatre in a yard at
the Red Lion, a farm in
Whitechapel just outside
the City of London.
The venture was not
a successful one. Though the
exact circumstances have
proved impossible to delineate,
the Red Lion soon fell into
disuse as a theatre. Undeterred,
in 1576 Brayne – together with
his brother-in-law James
Burbage, father of the actor
Richard Burbage, Shakespeare’s
associate – opened a more successful
venture, known simply as The
Theatre. That opening marked the
beginning of a flourishing era of theatrical
performances in London.
During the last three decades of
Elizabeth’s reign, Londoners could attend
a number of theatres – most famously
The Globe, which opened on Bankside in
1599, but also The Curtain, The Rose, The
Fortune and others. These were open to all
who could afford to enter them; richer
theatregoers paid a premium for places in
(ty pically three) terraces of covered seats,
while ‘groundlings’ paid their pennies to
crowd into the open space in front of the
stage. By 1610, the year in which Shakespeare
probably wrote Cymbeline and when the
theatres reopened after an enforced period
of closure during a plague outbreak, it’s been
estimated that London’s total theatre
capacity on any one night was some 10,000.
Plays were not new in England in
Elizabeth’s reign. Sometimes described as
‘interludes’, plays of various sorts had long
been performed at court, in the courtyards
of inns, at Oxford Colleges, in provincial
towns and in London’s Inns of Court. (The
first English play in blank verse, Gorboduc,
had been performed during the Christmas
celebrations of the Inner Temple in
1561–62.) In addition, rather different
performances might accompany religious
festivals in rural parishes and major cities
alike. But the professionalisation of drama
was new, fashioned above all to meet the
changing tastes of an urban elite. Indeed,
parallel developments took place in
a number of continental cities.
The development of purpose-built
theatres made the storage of props and
costumes easier, and nurtured permanent
companies of actors and stars of the stage
(such as Richard Burbage). Writing plays
could add to an author’s lustre and income.In addition to Shakespeare, the latter
years of Elizabeth’s reign witnessed the
flourishing of Christopher Marlowe, Ben
Jonson, Thomas Middleton and others.
For most modern readers, the arrival of
the professional, commercial theatre in
London is the most striking element in the
evolution of Elizabethan entertainments.Festivals and football
Less familiar to many today was the
annual round of festivals crucial to
the culture of late medieval English
Christianity. These were apparently
extremely popular, but wilted rapidly after
the religious settlement of 1559 ensured
that England would become a Protestant
nation. Such festivals varied enormously
in size and elaborateness. At one end of
the spectrum sat the parish ales or otherlocal feasts, often held in the name of the
relevant parish’s patron saint, affairs
that encouraged communal solidarity.
These events also, through the sale
of food and drink, raised money
for the poor.
Other celebrations were
much larger in scale and scope.
For example, during the
Corpus Christi celebrations
at York, the consecrated host
was placed in a silver-and-
crystal shrine protected by
a canopy, to be processed
along a route past houses hung
with tapestries, with fresh
rushes and flowers laid at their
doors. Fifty-two plays were
performed by the city’s various
craft guilds, telling the Christian
story from the creation to doomsday.
This rich, Catholic, popular culture
was shattered under Edward VI, enjoyed
a considerable revival under Mary I, but
then declined under Elizabeth. The main
agents of change were godly reformers in
positions of local power. York’s Corpus
Christi celebrations, for example, were
ended as part of a more general attack on
traditional practices in the north headed
by a trio of reformists – the dean of York,
the archbishop of York and the Earl of
Huntingdon, who became Lord President
of the Council of the North in 1572.
By the end of Elizabeth’s reign, a new
annual celebration had established itself as
a vital element in the festive calendar: the
Queen’s accession day, 17 November, the
anniversary of Elizabeth’s taking the crown
(hence the popular name for the festival,
‘Crownation Day’). It became established
largely after the Northern Rising of 1569
and the papal bull excommunicating
Elizabeth in 1570. (For more on Queen’s
Day, see page 63).
Though celebrations associated with
the old ritual year were waning, there is
scattered evidence of popular pastimes of
a more secular nature: wrestling, football
(another target of Puritan opprobrium),
archery, hunting – of which Elizabeth was
fond – cock-fighting, and bull- and
bear-baiting, in which the unfortunate
animals were attacked by dogs.
Above all, though, the decline of the
traditional, and largely Catholic, calendar
of festive events coincided with increased
involvement in another leisure-time
activity: going to the alehouse. In
Elizabethan England there was a tripartite
division of drinking establishments. Inns
were generally respectable establishments
that offered accommodation for people and BRIDGEMANIn Elizabethan theatres, richer patrons
sat in covered terraces, while ‘ground-
lings’ paid just a penny to stand in the
open space in front of the stageElizabethan lives / Entertainment and pastimes