I had no intention of meeting the Bard in London (or anywhere else). Ever since that first Merchant of Venice class in college 47 years ago, I’ve done everything possible to avoid him, even though he had me feeling all sorts of things for Shylock, and later, Macbeth. So, why would I look for him in the till recently not so trendy Shoreditch? But I guess he hadeth other plans. Not just Banksy, you lily-liver’d woman, the Bard himself must thou encounter.
A ten minute walk from where we were staying on Hackney Road, a lattice of lanes which were once decidedly dark and dangerous, now trying not to lose that feel entirely. There, on New Inn Broadway the painted facade of the building where once stood “The Theatre”. It all began here… The Theatre was called that after the Latin theatrum (if I am not wrong).
Why here? Around the mid 1500s, spooked by the plague, London city authorities decided, no more playhouses within city limits… they spread germs and also (bring the smelling salts) immorality. In 1575, all players were expelled. Shoreditch was just outside the city back then. So, enterprising folks set up the earliest playhouses of England here. A certain Mr James Burbage built “The Theatre” in the liberty (a bit like a free zone where different rules apply) of Holywell, in 1576. It was here that several years later Shakespeare first performed and wrote plays. He was part of the “playing company” called Lord Chamberlain’s Men. He was actor, playwright, and shareholder too later. Romeo and Juliet’s first performance was on this stage in 1597. James’s son Richard Burbage was Romeo and Robert Goffe, Juliet.
A couple of years later, the theatre owner and the landlord had a skirmish, so the company started performing at The Curtain, another playhouse nearby. The Theatre wasn’t the first playhouse in London, it had came up after the Red Lion which was in Whitechapel, but it outlived that one, was way more successful, and well known (after all, Shakespeare).
On the night of 29 December, 1598 (if wiki is right), the Burbage brothers and a team of carpenters and coworkers took The Theatre apart beam by beam. they carried all the material across the river to Bankside in Southwark and built their new playhouse… The Globe.
Strange, we only heard of The Globe in class, I thought as I looked at the kitschy but cute Romeo and Juliet wall, can’t recall The Theatre being mentioned. Maybe I was bunking that day. I stood there where fate (very Greek type) had brought me. The writer sat still on a bench, quill poised. Was he about to scribble “Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch of the rang’d empire fall! Here is my space”?
No, haven’t read Antony and Cleopatra, maybe now I will. And understand nothing.
……….
Theatre historian Julian Bowsher has said that story about the overnight demolition of The Theatre may be a bit of an exaggeration. Okay… but it’s too good a story not to mention.
From The Guardian of 29 august, 2018: The Shoreditch site was rediscovered in 2008 by archaeologists from The Museum of London working on a development.
The lane that leads up to the site of The Theatre. New Inn Broadway begins literally at the place where you can see the path getting wider. Shoreditch was not the kind of place which you’d visit London as a tourist. But for a while now there’s been work going on in these old streets and alleyways to make them safer, cooler, a home for the young, both to hang out and live in. A bit of Shoreditch’s edge is naturally somewhat blunted, but it’s not all gone, not yet at least. As I write, I feel like going for a walk in those lanes again.
He could turn that into high poetry too i bet.
My first sighting of the elusive Banksy. All the prankish secrecy, the mystery, the anti stance, deftly creating a brand. the market, no escape from it. Or maybe, methinks, one doesn’t want to escape it at all.
