Salisbury Court Theater

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Salisbury Court Theater
Map of London with all theaters up to the official closure in 1642 (Salisbury Court Theater is west of St Paul's Cathedral)
location
Address: Salisbury Court
City: London
Coordinates: 51 ° 30 '48 "  N , 0 ° 6' 22"  W Coordinates: 51 ° 30 '48 "  N , 0 ° 6' 22"  W.
Architecture and history
Opened: 1629
Spectator: (estimated) 600 places
Named after: Location
destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666

The Salisbury Court Theater was a 17th century London theater. It was located near Salisbury Court, the former residence of the Bishop of Salisbury . This was acquired in 1564 by Richard Sackville, the English Chancellor of the Exchequer under Queen Elizabeth . When his son Thomas Sackville was given the title of Earl of Dorset in 1604 , the building was renamed Dorset House. Thomas Sackville's grandson, Edward Sackville, 4th Earl of Dorset, was Lord Chamberlain under Queen Henrietta Maria in the 1630s . At that time he was seen as the driving force behind theater and drama in London and was behind the founding of the Salisbury Court Theater.

Contemporary chronicler Edmund Howes described that in 1629 "a new beautiful theater" was built just west of the medieval walls of London , between Fleet Street and the Thames , in a converted barn or granary on the Dorset House grounds. As a closed "private" venue, similar to the Blackfriars Theater , it was a successor to the former Whitefriars Theater (which was on the other side of West Water Lane and was derelict) and the short-lived Porter's Hall Theater . It provided an upscale audience contrast to inconsiderate theaters such as the Globe Theater , the Fortune Playhouse and the Red Bull Theater , which served a mass audience. Especially the latter two.

Little is known about the outline and shape of the Salisbury Court Theater. However, since it was on a plot of land 13 meters wide and nearly 43 meters long, it may have been more or less similar to the design for a small theater that was later made by Inigo Jones in the James I or Charles I era .

The Salisbury Court was by Richard Gunnell to the cost of 1,000 (or 1,200) pounds built an experienced actor and director of the Fortune Theater and William Blagrave, an employee of Sir Henry Herbert, who at that time the post of Master of the Revels held . When the two theater founders died in quick succession (Gunnell 1635 and Blagrave 1636) Richard Heton took over the business, who from then on led the theater more tightly ("dictatorial management"). The King's Revels Men (1630–31 and 1633–36), Prince Charles's Men (1631–33) and Queen Henrietta's Men (1637–42) made frequent appearances in the house. For a while it faced stiff competition from the Cockpit Theater and the Red Bull Theater.

Salisbury Court was the last theater built before all London theaters closed in 1642. After the closure it served other purposes, but sometimes it was still used as a place for theater performances, despite the ban. That went well for a while, but on October 6, 1647, the authorities stormed a performance of "A King and No King" (by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher ). On New Year's Day 1649, law enforcement officers stormed all four London theaters at the same time; the Salisbury and Cockpit actors were jailed, as was a Fortune Theater trapeze artist . Only the actors from the Red Bull Theater managed to escape. In March 1649, the authorities also destroyed the interior of all theaters, so that further performances were impossible.

After 18 years of banning public theater performances during the interregnum , they were re-admitted in 1660 by King Charles II in the course of the Stuart Restoration . On August 21, 1660 he gave the playwright Thomas Killigrew and Sir William Davenant preliminary permission each to found a theater company ("Company"). Killigrews King's Company was supported and encouraged by the king himself; Davenants Duke's Company received patronage from his brother, the Duke of York , who later became King James II. These temporary privileges were later replaced by a letters patent , combined with the cementing of a hereditary theater monopoly for the patent holder ("Theater Royal").

The Salisbury Court Theater was renovated and refurbished under the direction of William Beeston. It was then played for some time from November 1660 to June 1661 by the Duke's Company . The company then moved to the nearby Lincoln's Inn Fields Theater , a converted ballroom . Samuel Pepys ' diaries record various visits beginning in 1661 (which is often called the Whitefriars Theater here ). His records tell us today about the plays that were played at the Salisbury Court Theater immediately after it reopened. So he saw there on February 9, 1661 "The Mad Lover" (by John Fletcher); on February 23, "The Changeling" (by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley , Thomas Betterton played De Flores ); on March 1, “The Bondman” (by Philip Massinger , here too Betterton played the leading role); March 16, "The Spanish Curate" (by Fletcher and Massinger); on March 2nd "Love's Mistress" (by Thomas Heywood ) and Fletcher's "Rule a Wife and Have a Wife" on April 1st.

The building was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. A replacement was found in 1671 in the Dorset Garden Theater (architect Christopher Wren ) , a few meters away in the direction of the Thames . In memory of the old Salisbury Square Theater there is a plaque on the south side of Salisbury Square (on the east side of a company building).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Andrew John Gurr with John Orrell, Rebuilding Shakespeare's Globe, New York, Routledge, 1989; P. 139. Likewise, pages 129-38.
  2. ↑ The Staging of Plays at the Salisbury Court Theater, 1630-1642 by David Stevens, published in Theater Journal Issue 31, No. 4 (December 1979) pages 511-525
  3. ↑ Kinney, Arthur F. A Companion to Renaissance Drama. London, Blackwell Publishing, 2002. p. 161.
  4. ↑ Milhous, Judith. Thomas Betterton and the Management of Lincoln's Inn Fields, 1696-1708. Carbondale, IL, Southern Illinois University Press, 1979. page 4.
  5. ^ John Downes, Roscius Anglicanus, 1708; Ayer Publishing (reprint), 1968; Pages 68-69.

literature

  • Bentley, GE The Jacobean and Caroline Stage. 7 volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1941–68.
  • Halliday, FE A Shakespeare Companion 1564-1964 Baltimore, Penguin, 1964.
  • Kinney, Arthur F. A Companion to Renaissance Drama. London, Blackwell Publishing, 2002.
  • Stevens, David. "The Staging of Plays at the Salisbury Court Theater, 1630-1642." Theater Journal , Volume 31 No. 4 (December 1979), pages. 511-25.
  • Thomson, Peter, Jane Milling, and Joseph W. Donohue, eds. The Cambridge History of British Theater. 3 volumes, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005.
  • Old and New London: Volume 1 (1878), pages 182-99. 'Whitefriars' online ,