Shakespearean Playhouses A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration — Reading Notes

Archival Groundwork and Scholarly Method

Adams emphasizes that his book is the result of a first-hand examination of original sources, not a synthesis of secondary accounts. He names earlier scholars—W.J. Lawrence, T.S. Graves, G.F. Reynolds, V.E. Albright, A.H. Thorndike, and B. Neuendorff—who have studied dramatic representation, but notes that no one had yet attempted a comprehensive history of the playhouses themselves. The only previous book dealing even in part with the topic, T.F. Ordish's The Early London Theatres in the Fields, was written a quarter-century earlier, before most relevant documents were discovered, and discussed only six playhouses. Adams's volume takes advantage of materials made available by later scholars and records the history of seventeen regular theatres.

The Red Bull: A Case Study in Documentary Evidence

The excerpt on the Red Bull playhouse illustrates Adams's method. He cites a patent issued to the Queen's Men on April 15, 1609, giving them license to play at the Red Bull in Clerkenwell and the Curtain in Holywell. He notes that Heath's Epigrams (1610) refers to the Globe, the Fortune, and the Curtain as the three important public playhouses, suggesting the Red Bull may not yet have been fully established. Yet Dekker's Raven's Almanack (1609) makes clear that the Queen's Men were playing regularly at the Red Bull by that year. Adams also reproduces a letter from an apprentice, John Gill, injured on the Red Bull stage, which survives in a defaced state. These details show how Adams weaves together patents, literary references, and legal records to reconstruct the theatre's history.

Company Movements and the Shifting Landscape

Adams traces the movements of acting companies across playhouses, revealing a dynamic and competitive theatrical economy. The Queen's Men, led by Thomas Greene and later Christopher Beeston, moved from the Curtain to the Red Bull around 1605. In 1617, Beeston transferred the company to the Cockpit in Drury Lane, but a riot drove them back to the Red Bull within a week. After Queen Anne's death in 1619, the company dissolved; Beeston joined Prince Charles's Men at the Cockpit, while other members continued at the Red Bull under the simple title 'The Red Bull Company.' Adams also notes Edward Alleyn's account book entries for October 1617, recording visits to the Red Bull and receipts of £3 6s. 4d. for a play called The Younger Brother, though he cautions that these do not necessarily imply Alleyn was part owner.

Adams's study is valuable for its insistence on primary sources and its refusal to generalize beyond what the documents support. Readers interested in the physical and economic realities of Elizabethan theatre will find a meticulous account of how playhouses were built, owned, and used by competing companies. The book is best approached as a reference work to be consulted alongside the plays themselves.

The rain kept time with the archival footnotes in Shakespearean Playhouses, and I found myself drifting to the Red Bull’s cramped galleries. Later, pulling a stray volume off the shelf, I landed on Two Men of Sandy Bar: A Drama — Edition Insights, its frontier squabbles oddly echoing those early theatre rivalries. One dusty afternoon simply folded into another.