Cockpit theater

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Cockpit theater
Plan drawings possibly for the Cockpit Theater, attributed to Inigo Jones (but presumably by his protégé John Webb)
location
Address: Cockpit Alley (exited), ending in Dury Lane
City: London
Coordinates: 51 ° 30 '52 "  N , 0 ° 7' 14"  W Coordinates: 51 ° 30 '52 "  N , 0 ° 7' 14"  W.
Architecture and history
Construction time: 1530-1532
Opened: (as theater)

November 9, 1616

Spectator: less than 600 seats
Architect: Inigo Jones (uncertain)
Named after: former use as a cockfight arena  (1616)
Alternative name from 1617 "The Phoenix"

No longer used after 1665; departed today

The Cockpit Theater , also known as the Cockpit for short , was a small theater in London . It existed from 1616 to about 1665. It was the first theater to be located on Drury Lane . After being destroyed in 1617, it was called The Phoenix , but all sources continue to quote it as the cockpit (theater).

history

The Cockpit Theater, on the far left as a black outline of the building on Dury Lane

The original building was actually a “cockpit”, an arena for cockfights (from cock = cock and pit = pit). Presumably, as is customary for this, the square was round and 12 meters (40 feet) in diameter. Presumably it had a pitched roof. The cockpit was part of an amusement park and was built around the beginning of the 1530s, in the time of Henry VIII . Records report a major restoration in 1581–1582 and renovations in 1589–1590, 1602–1603 and 1608–1609 (the latter under John Best, "Cockmaster" under Henry Frederick Stuart, Prince of Wales , eldest son and heir of James I. . ).

Christopher Beeston

In August 1616, the actor and impresario Christopher Beeston took over the lease of the building and converted it into a closed theater building. On February 7, 1617 ( Shrove Tuesday ) hundreds of young people tried to destroy the theater. Probably out of annoyance, because her favorite pieces were moved from the much cheaper and reckless Red Bull Theater (1 Penny) to the new Cockpit Theater (6 Penny). There was a scuffle with the actors, cupboards and inventory were looted, torn and burned. One of the youths was killed by an actor's gun shot in the head. The rapid restoration of the theater may be the reason why the house was also called the " Phoenix Theater". Similar to previous theaters, such as The Theater in Shoreditch and The Globe in Southwark , the location was outside the jurisdiction of the City of London . Christopher Beeston expanded the small building significantly. At the time, however, new buildings were prohibited in London, so that only major modifications were permitted. The records of that time include complaints from neighbors about the construction work. In September 1616, his bricklayer John Shepherd was arrested for working on a new foundation and a few weeks later Beeston was accused of wanting to build a rental house instead of an extension. The finished theater measured an estimated 16 m (52 ​​ft) by 11 m (37 ft), "significantly smaller than Blackfriars ."

It is not certain who was commissioned with the redesign, but some evidence points to Inigo Jones . Two sheets, signed by Jones, showing the interior and exterior design of “one” theater have been preserved. The theater historian John Orrell considers it possible, without being able to prove this, that this theater is the Cockpit Theater. In 1629, however, Inigo Jones designed another "cockpit theater", a small private venue in the Palace of Whitehall , called the Cockpit-in-Court or Royal Cockpit.

Beeston wanted the Cockpit Theater as a closed complement to the open, bad weather Red Bull Theater , in which his theater company Queen Anne's Men has so far performed. In order to keep up with the Blackfriars Theater and its ensemble of King's Men , another venue was needed for the winter. After a bumpy start, the company proved to be quite successful at their second home. Wickham attributes the success less to the actors and their work than to the location, the comfort of the theater and the charisma of its artistic director Beeston.

Beeston oversaw several different troops in the cockpit until his death in 1639. His Queen Anne's Men played there from 1617 to 1619 and when they broke up due to the death of Anna of Denmark , their place was taken by the Prince Charles's Men from 1619 to 1622 . The Lady Elizabeth's Men then performed there from 1622 to 1624. The Queen Henrietta's Men who followed in 1525 had a long stint at the Cockpit Theater, which lasted until 1636. The last theater company to occupy the cockpit under Beeston was put together by himself - the boys ensemble of the King and Queen's Young Company ; it was the last compilation of boy actors of that time. The troupe, also known as Beeston's Boys , played in the time of his successor, his son William.

After Beeston

William, however, did not have a good hand in choosing the pieces. They met with increasing rejection of the court and so he was forced out of the theater in 1639 and replaced by William Davenant . Shortly thereafter, however, in 1642, all theaters in London were closed by order of Parliament . The cockpit was used as a school, but there were occasional illegal theater performances. At one of these, it was stormed by soldiers of the Puritans in 1649 and the actors arrested. Hoping to return to the theater there, William Beeston paid £ 200 in 1651 to repair the theater. However, this hope turned out to be an illusion. In the final years of the English interregnum , in the widespread belief that music is not a drama, Davenant allowed two licensed operas to be performed in the Cockpit Theater: 1658 The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru and 1659 Sir Francis Drake .

This theater ban was lifted in the English Restoration of 1660, when Charles II granted the letters patent to two theater companies to perform "legitimate theater plays" in London. These were the Duke's Company , led by Davenant, and the King's Company, led by Thomas Killigrew . Both companies used old, existing theaters, such as the Cockpit Theater and the Salisbury Court Theater , but quickly moved into their own new and more modern venues; Davenant in 1661 in a converted ballroom , the later Lincoln's Inn Fields Theater and Killigrew in 1660 in Gibbon's Tennis Court on Vere Street. But other companies also played in the Cockpit Theater, such as John Rhodes and George Jolly. Samuel Pepys described several visits to the theater between 1660 and 1663 in his diary.

The End

In 1663, Killigrews King's Company opened the nearby Theater Royal Drury Lane . From then on, the Cockpit Theater was unable to keep up with this relatively great new theater and was also prevented from bringing further plays to the stage, as the theater monopoly lay entirely with the two patent companies. There is no record of any piece being played in the cockpit after 1665. The further fate of the building is unknown.

The Cockpit Theater (or Phoenix Theater) was located in an area that is now bordered by the streets of Drury Lane, Great Queen Street, Great Wild Street and Kemble Street. The entrance to the theater was in Cockpit Alley (now defunct), which ran from Drury Lane to Great Wild Street; Today the opposite junction with Martlett Court marks roughly the place where Cockpit Alley was.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Estimate based on the description that it was significantly smaller than the Blackfriars Theater (600–2000 spectators)
  2. ↑ John H. Astington, Fall 1982: "The Whitehall Cockpit: The Building and the Theater" in the journal "English Literary Renaissance", Volume 12, Issue 3, p. 307
  3. ↑ John Orrell: The Theaters of Inigo Jones and John Webb . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1985, ISBN 978-0-521-25546-2 , p. 90.
  4. ^ Gurr, Andrew, with John Orrell (1989). Rebuilding Shakespeare's Globe. New York, Routledge. P. 142.
  5. ^ Wickham, p. 117.
  6. ↑ Andrew Gurr (Ed.): Shakespeare's Workplace: Essays on Shakespearean Theater . Cambridge University Press, 2017, ISBN 978-1-316-73924-2 , pp. 138 (English, limited preview in Google Book search).
  7. ^ Andrew Gurr: The Shakespearean Stage, 1574-1642, p. 15
  8. ↑ Description in Map of London
  9. ^ Bentley, GE The Jacobean and Caroline Stage. 2 volumes. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941.
  10. ^ The Shakespearean Stage, 1574-1642 by Andrew Gurr in a Google book search
  11. ↑ Shakespeare Survey 30, p. 157.
  12. ^ Wickham, p. 118.
  13. ↑ Thomson. P. 225; Harbage, p. 356.
  14. ^ Gurr and Orrell, p. 146.
  15. ↑ Thomson, p. 225.
  16. ^ Herbert Berry, "The Phoenix". In Glynne Wickham, Herbert Berry, and William Ingram, eds., English Professional Theater, 1530-1660 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. pp. 623-637.

literature

  • Andrew John Gurr with John Orrell (1989). Rebuilding Shakespeare's Globe. New York, Routledge.
  • Andrew Gurr (1992). The Shakespearean Stage. Third edition, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
  • Alfred Harbage, et al. (1989). The Annals of English Drama 975-1700. London: Routledge
  • John Orrell (1977). "Inigo Jones at The Cockpit", Muir, Kenneth Ed. Shakespeare Survey , paperback p. 30
  • Thomson, Peter (1995). "Cockpit Theater", Banham, Martin The Cambridge Guide to Theater . Cambridge University Press, p. 225
  • Wickham, Glynne (1972). Early English Stages 1300 to 1660: Volume Two 1576 to 1660, Part II . London: Routledge

Web links