Four Centuries of Shakespearean Production
F.E. Halliday finds that every age, from the first Elizabethan to the present one, has evolved its own methods of producing Shakespeare; sometimes with results that might have surprised the dramatist.
When Shakespeare was a schoolboy of twelve, James Burbage built the first English theatre in the north London suburb of Shoreditch. He called it The Theatre, for that is what it was, The Theatre, the only one in the country, and it was here that Shakespeare’s first plays were staged, with Burbage’s son, Richard, as the leading actor. That was in the early 1590’s; but meanwhile a rival theatre had been built on the south bank of the Thames, the Rose, where Edward Alleyn played the titanic heroes in Marlowe’s tragedies. In 1595 came the Swan, also on Bankside, and in 1599 Shakespeare’s company, the Lord Chamberlain’s, built the Globe next door to the Rose.
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