Porter's Hall Theater
| Porter's Hall Theater | |
| location | |
| Address: | Puddle Dock |
| City: | London |
| Coordinates: | 51 ° 30 '40 " N , 0 ° 6' 8" W |
| Architecture and history | |
| Construction time: | 1615-1617 |
| Opened: | never, but was already used during the construction period |
| Named after: | Location (adjacent warehouse?) |
| (given coordinates only presumably)
Demolished in 1617 by royal order |
|
The Porter's Hall Theater was a small theater in west London , but it only had a very short life. The license for the theater was revoked during construction and the building was demolished shortly after completion. In between, however, it was already played.
The royal building permit
The Porter's Hall Theater was planned and built by the composer and ensemble director Philip Rosseter . It stood in Blackfriars on what was then known as the “Puddle Wharf” (or “Puddle Dock”). Rosseter felt compelled to build a new theater after he had lost the lease at the Whitefriars Theater in 1614 . The new property owner refused to extend the seven-year lease contract. Rosseter bought with his business partners, Philip Kingman and Ralph Reeve, a property near the Thames on the Puddle Wharf (shipyard in the sense of shore) near the Porter's Hall (warehouse?) And parts of a property called "Lady Saunders House". He then asked the king for permission to build a new theater on it. He received the royal license on June 3, 1615. Rosseter did not begin to demolish Lady Saunders' house on the quay until a few months later and to carry out the first construction work for the new theater.
The contradiction of the city of London
The city tour of London was against building another theater in the city. Since 1594 the Lord Mayors decided not to allow new theaters to be built in the city. A ban that was only relaxed in 1660. Rosseter was advised that the royal permit was supposedly only for new buildings outside of town and that the license should be returned. To substantiate this legally, a petition was made in August 1615 to Sir Edward Coke , the incumbent Lord Chief Justice at the High Court of Justice . On September 26, the court ruled that the license for a new venue did not include the construction of a theater within the city and that all construction work had to be suspended. This is a legally questionable decision as the royal license described the exact location:
... all which premisses are sittuat and being within the precinct of the Blackfryers neere Puddlewharfe, in the subourbes of London, called by the name of the Ladie Saunders house, or otherwise Porters Hall ...
On September 26, 1615, the Privy Council , the King's Advisory Chamber, issued instructions that no such theater was to be built and that the Lord Mayor should detain anyone who offered to continue with the construction. Rosseter trusted the uniqueness of the royal license and that he had advocates on the city council. In addition, Rosseter and his partners delayed the process through appeals, so they were able to carry out the first theater performances in the partly unfinished building. However, on January 27, 1617, the king finally decided that the theater should be torn down. At this point the theater had just been completed.
The piece "Amends for Ladies" by Nathan Field was printed in 1618 with the note "As it was acted at the Blacke Fryers, both by the Princes Seruants, and the Lady Elizabeths" and suggests that it was already in Porter's Hall Theater was brought to the stage in 1616 or early 1617.
Other names for the theater were Puddle Wharf or Rosseter's Blackfriars .
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c John Payne Collier (Ed.): The History of English Dramatic Poetry to the Time of Shakespeare: And Annals of the Stage to the Restoration, Volume 1 . 1831, p. 396 (English, limited preview in Google Book search).
- ↑ Andrew Gurr (Ed.): Shakespeare's Workplace: Essays on Shakespearean Theater . Cambridge University Press, 2017, ISBN 978-1-316-73924-2 , pp. 136 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
- ↑ , John Astington. Actors and Acting in Shakespeare's Time: The Art of Stage Playing. Cambridge University Press, 2010. p. 211.