Last Updated August 11 , 2008 (scroll down to bottom third of page for video)
The Museum of London Archaeology has discovered what it believes to be the brick foundation of the Theatre, one of London’s first purpose-built playhouses. Although just announced this week, the discovery was made in June during preparation work for a new building for the Tower Theatre Company. The site is located on New Inn Broadway in Shoreditch, which is within the East London Borough of Hackney. It has long been known that an open air playhouse, called the Theatre, stood in this area, but traces of its exact location have until now proved elusive.
The Theatre was constructed in 1576 by actor-manager James Burbage. Burbage chose to build his playhouse in Shoreditch because it was outside the jurisdiction of London authorities who were opposed to public theatre. Leicester’s Men, an acting company sponsored by Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, may have performed at the Theatre when it first opened. The Admiral’s Men took up residence at the Theatre until the company moved to the Rose Theatre on the banks of the Thames River. Shakespeare’s company, the Lord Chamberlains Men, performed at the Theatre from 1594 until 1597. Richard II, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Henry IV, and The Merry Wives of Windsor are among Shakespeare’s plays that were probably performed at the Theatre.
A dispute with the landlord forced the Burbage family to close the Theatre in 1597 and look for another performance space. In December of 1598, they dismantled the Theatre and carried the timbers across the Thames where they were used in the construction of the Globe Theatre.
Archaeologists are not yet 100 percent sure the newly discovered remains belong to the Theatre. But they say the shape, age and location of these remains all point to their being part of the lost playhouse. The foundation appears to be in the form of a polygon, which documentary evidence suggests was the shape of the Theatre. Researchers believe the unearthed remains form the north-eastern corner of the building.
Jo Lyon, Senior Archaeologist at Museum of London Archaeology said, “It’s extremely exciting to be so close to the known location of The Theatre and then find remains that look to be associated with it.” She adds, “We can now start to work on the detail of what the building here might have looked like, and expand our knowledge of the playhouses of Elizabethan London.”
Archaeologist Jo Lyon shows Channel 4’s Nicholas Glass around the site of the Theatre
If this is actually the Theatre, it would be the fourth Elizabethan playhouse to be discovered in London. The foundation of the Rose Theatre was discovered and excavated by the museum in 1989. Later that same year, the foundation of the original Globe Theatre was unearthed by museum archaeologists and partially excavated. The museum also excavated a portion of another angled brick foundation in 1999, which is likely to have been part of the 17th century Hope Theatre. The Rose Theatre site is visible today and open to the public. The Globe and Hope sites were covered following excavation.
This past March, the Reverend Paul Turp, vicar of St Leonard’s parish in London, also announced he had discovered the buried remains of Shakespeare’s ‘lost’ church in Shoreditch, not far from the site of the Theatre.
For now, the brick remains of the Theatre have been covered with concrete while planning for the site is discussed.
The Tower Theatre Company plans to build a modern, 130 seat theatre near the site of the original Theatre. Jeff Kelly, Chairman of the Tower Theatre Company, said, “In the run up to submitting a formal planning application we, our architect and structural engineer will all be working with English Heritage and the planning authority to ensure that the design of our building enables the archaeology to be retained in situ.”
Web Resources:
The Theatre - Wikipedia article
Tudor Hackney - online exhibition from the National Archives
One Comment
It’s exciting, and it will be usefully compared with the excavations at the sites on the other side of the river, but the work on the site of The Rose theatre (on Bankside, almost contemporary with the Shoreditch Theatre) 20 years ago was astonishingly important in terms of how archaeology fits into the planning system and how professional archaeology developed. If we hadn’t had The Rose, we wouldn’t have found the Shoreditch Theatre.