The Story of London in 50 Novels: 9 - "Nothing Like the Sun," by Anthony Burgess

The golden age of English theatre spanned the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. It was overwhelmingly a London phenomenon (although productions did tour, especially when the plague was raging in the City), and is not really matched in any of the other major cities of Europe, where the main cultural achievements of the late Renaissance were in the fields of painting, sculpture, architecture, and music. We have already looked at this in relation to Christopher Marlowe, but his career was cut short by murder, and his reputation, in modern times, has been eclipsed by that of his longer-lived contemporary, William Shakespeare.

William Shakespeare, by John Taylor, 1610 (The Chandos Portrait). Image: National Portrait Gallery (Public Domain).

Unlike Marlowe, Shakespeare did not have the advantage of a university education (he might, perhaps, have taken a degree at Oxford, had his family not fallen upon hard times, the result of ill-advised business risks taken by his father). Shakespeare probably arrived in London some time between 1585 and 1592, and joined an acting troupe, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, who staged productions at The Theatre in Shoreditch. He soon began writing, as well as acting, attracting the jealousy of rival playwrights. Robert Greene (when did we last see a play of his performed?) wrote, in 1592, that " ... there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes Factotum is in his own conceit the only shake-scene in a country."

Coat of arms procured by Shakespeare for his father, 1596. Image: College of Heralds (Public Domain).

The Theatre had been built by James Burbage, the father of the actor, Richard, who played the leading roles in many of Shakespeare's plays, but the lease on the land expired in 1599, and the actors, assisted by a carpenter, dismantled the theatre, and transported the timber, beam by beam, across the Thames. Their new theatre, The Globe, opened in 1599, and it was here that several of Shakespeare's plays, including Julius Caesar and Henry V, were first performed.

The Globe in 1647, by Wenceslaus Hollar (image is in the Public Domain).

The reconstructed "Shakespeare's Globe," opened in 1997. Photo: ChrisO (licensed under GNU).

The original location of The Globe. Image: Old Moonraker (licensed under CCA).

Conjectural reconstruction of The Globe, by Walter Hodges (1958). Image: Folger Shakespeare Library (licensed under CCA). 

Shakespeare's true home was always in Stratford-upon-Avon (in London he lived in rented rooms), and he retired there in 1613, dying three years later. In 1642 the theatres, including The Globe, were closed by Parliamentary decree, marking the end of the London theatre's golden age.

Anthony Burgess's novel, Nothing Like the Sun, follows Shakespeare's perambulations between Stratford and London, and explores his personal and professional relationships, including his romantic entanglements with both women and men (of the private life of the historical Shakespeare we actually know very little, although there are good reasons for believing that he may have been, in modern terms, bisexual). The novel presents a vivid picture both of Shakespeare's (imagined) character, and of the London through which he walked.

Long View of London, by Wenceslaus Hollar, 1647 (image is in the Public Domain). 

Panorama of London, by Claes Visscher, 1616. Image: Library of Congress (Public Domain).

"Far from the river now. North of the divers fair and large builded houses for merchants and suchlike. North even of the City Wall and the fair summer houses north of the wall. Good air in Shoreditch. The Theatre a finer playhouse than The Rose. Burbage as good a man of business any day as Henslowe and an old player too, though, from what I see, of no great skill. But now, his son promises, this Richard. He may yet go further than Alleyn. Is that Giles Alleyn from whom old Burbage got the land of Ned's kin? It may be so. In '76 it was. A lease of twenty-one years. A mere patch with rank grass and dog-turds, even a man's bones they say. A skull grinning up at the surveyors. And now a fair playhouse. Twenty-one years, let me see. To '98, which is but four more. Will this Alleyn renew? Were I he I would not. But it is the men more than the playhouse, sure. The Lord Chamberlain's Men."

"Let me take a breath, let me take a swig, for, my heart, she is coming. She is about to make her entrance. It was while he was walking off Bishopsgate - Houndsditch, Camomile Street, St Helen's Place, St Helen's Church - that he saw her. She stepped from her own coach outside a house near St Helen's, escorted by her unveiled maid. But, in the fresh fall wind, her veil lifted an instant; he saw. He saw a face the sun had blessed to gold ... They were rehearsing Romeo at the Theatre when, in a break or brief ale-intermission, he asked old James Burbage ... 'There be many tales touching her origins. Her own story is (or they say so) that she was brought back as an infant from the East Indies by Sir Francis Drake himself, in the Golden Hind that lies at Deptford now. It is said that both her father and mother were a sort of noble Moors of those parts and were killed by Drake's men in a fight they had there, then she was left all alone and weeping and so, in pity, was brought to England to be in a manner adopted.'"

Saint Helen's, Bishopsgate, where Shakespeare was, for a time, a parishioner. Photo: Lonpicman (licensed under GNU). 

Richard Burbage:

"They have relented: we may play again.
Gain, though - what gain? Only the Rose hath gained
With three new petals that to us be thorns.
Spencer and Shaa and pestilential Ben
Have navigated the rough Marshal's sea
And are three masts now for the Admiral."

Mark Patton is a published author of historical fiction and non-fiction, whose books can be purchased from Amazon.

The Streets of Old Southwark: East Bankside - Blood Sports and Theatres

A visitor to London, following the south bank of the River Thames from London Bridge towards Westminster Bridge, emerges from Clink Street onto Bankside. Today, this stretch of the riverside is crowded with tourists, attracted by its bar and restaurants, as well as by cultural institutions, including the reconstructed Shakespeare's Globe and Tate Modern.

The reconstructed Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, Bankside. Photo: ChrisO (licensed under GNU).

Throughout much of the Twentieth Century, however, Bankside was very much part of the working environment of the London Docks. The blog-site, "A London Inheritance," has an extensive collection of "then and now" photographs (the former inherited by its author from his late father), which can be seen here and here. Ironically, however, if we imagine ourselves back to the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, the atmosphere of the area would have been more akin to that which we experience today, albeit with a rather different range of attractions.

Bankside incorporates parts of two ancient "liberties," that of The Clink, and that of Paris Garden, both of which fell outside the jurisdiction of City and Shire authorities, and in both of which were consequently to be found numerous brothels, gambling dens, and rowdy taverns. Other popular entertainments, from the mid-Sixteenth Century onwards, included bull-baiting and bear-baiting.

Bull and bear-baiting rings on Bankside, c1580. William Smith's manuscript of The Description of England (image is in the Public Domain). 

The Bear Garden, Bankside, before 1616, Visscher's Map of London (image is in the Public Domain).

Bear-baiting, by Abraam Hondius, 1650, private collection (image is in the Public Domain).

In the 1580s, two entrepreneurs, Philip Henslowe and John Cholmley, both of whom had financial interests in brothels and blood-sports, embarked on what might, today, be called a "brand extension," investing money in the construction of The Rose Theatre, in the liberty of The Clink. The commercial theatre was a relatively new (and uniquely English) phenomenon, but earlier theatres had, for the most part, been situated to the north and east of the City of London.

London's early play-houses (image is in the Public Domain).

The Rose was used by the Lord Admiral's Men, and produced plays by, among others, Christopher Marlowe. Its foundations have been partially excavated, and small-scale productions are staged there - an unforgettable experience for a modern visitor to London. Henslowe's "diaries" (actually more of a ledger-book) are also preserved, with records of loans and payments to writers, including Thomas Middleton, Thomas Dekker, and Ben Jonson.

The Rose Theatre today, with the outlines of stage and stalls picked out by lights. Photo: David Sim (licensed under CCA).

Henslowe's "Diary," Dulwich College (image is in the Public Domain).

Henslowe built The Hope Theatre with another business partner, Jacob Meade, in 1613-14, on the site of the old Bear Garden (they equipped it with a removeable stage, so that it could still be used for blood-sports, as well as for theatrical performances). It opened on 31st October 1614, with a production of Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair.

When Philip Henslowe died in 1616, his share in the theatres passed to his son-in-law, Edward Alleyn, an actor who had made many of the great Marlovian roles his own (Doctor Faustus, Tamburlaine, Barabas in The Jew of Malta). When Alleyn's first wife (Henslowe's step-daughter, Joan) died, he married Constance Donne, the daughter of the poet, John Donne, who was also the Dean of Saint Paul's, but her father disapproved of the union: perhaps he thought that some of Alleyn's business interests made him an inappropriate husband for a clergyman's daughter; or perhaps he suspected that the affection between them had begun before Joan's death, making it adulterous, in thought, if not in deed.

Edward Alleyn, 1626 (image is in the Public Domain).

The Swan Theatre, meanwhile, had been built by another impresario, Francis Longley in the liberty of Paris Garden. Johannes de Witt, a Dutchman who visited in 1596, described it as having a capacity for 3000 spectators.

The Swan Theatre, 1595, Arnoldus Buchelius, after Johannes de Witt (image is in the Public Domain).

The Globe Theatre was opened in 1599 by William Shakespeare's company, The Lord Chamberlain's Men, and probably saw the first performances of Henry V and Julius Caesar during the course of that year. The theatre burned down in 1613, during a production of Henry VIII, the fire apparently caused by the discharge of a theatrical cannon.

The Globe, 1647, by Wenceslaus Hollar (image is in the Public Domain). The adjoining buildings were used to prepare food for sale to theatre audiences.

The theatrical attractions of Bankside were to be short-lived, however. The fictional character of Malvolio, in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, prefigured the rise of the historical Puritans, who banned play-acting, bear-baiting and bull-baiting in 1642. When the English theatre was given new life, under the restored monarchy of Charles II, it was in the very different environment of Covent Garden's indoor theatres (no bull or bear-baiting there), with the female roles played, for the first time, by actresses, rather than by boys.

Mark Patton is a published author of historical fiction and non-fiction, whose books can be purchased from Amazon.

 

The Wards of Old London: Langbourn & Candlewick - Falstaff's Eastcheap

We have now completed three journeys through the Roman and Medieval walled city of London: the first following the main east-west road, from Farringdon Ward Within to Aldgate Ward; the second following the course of the Thames, from Tower Street Ward to Castle Baynard Ward; and the third following the line of the city walls, from Aldersgate Ward Within to Broad Street Ward. Whilst these journeys have taken us through most of the intramural wards, there are two in the south-eastern quadrant of the city that we have missed out: Langbourn and Candlewick.

Langbourn and Candlewick Wards, 18th Century map, British Library (image is in the Public Domain).

Much of what the visitor sees in these two wards today has been shaped by the planners and builders of the Victorian era, although a notable exception is the tower of All Hallows Staining Church, which has survived from the early Fourteenth Century.

The Medieval tower of All Hallows Staining. Photo: John Armagh (image is in the Public Domain).

Some flavour of the Medieval character of this part of the city may be had from John Lydgate's poem, "London Lickpenny," which tells of a countryman who comes to London to settle a property dispute in the courts, but finds that he can get nowhere without the funds to pay lawyers and bribe judges. Walking the streets of the city, he is assailed by many temptations, none of which he can afford. Eventually, he is robbed of his hood, but lacks the money even to buy it back, when he finds it for sale, not far from where he lost it.

"Then unto London I did me hie,
Of all the land it beareth the prize,
'Hot peascods!' one began to cry,
'Strawberry ripe!' and 'Cherries in the rise!'
One bade me come near and buy some spice,
Pepper and saffron they gan me bede,
But for lack of money I might not speed ...

Then went I forth by London Stone,
Throughout all Can'wick Street.
Drapers much cloth me offered anon;
Then comes me one cried 'Hot sheep's feet!'
One cried 'Mackerel!' 'Rushes green!' another gan greet;
One bade me buy a hood to cover my head,
But for want of money I might not be sped.

Then I hied me into East Cheap;
One cries 'Ribs of beef!' and many a pie;
Pewter pots they clattered on a heap,
There was harp, pipe and minstrelsie.
'Yea, by cock!' 'Nay, by cock!' some began to cry;
Some sang of Jenkin and Julian for their meed,
But for lack of money, I might not speed."

Lydgate (c1370-1451) was a Benedictine monk, but his religious duties seem not to have constrained his literary output, which was greater than those of Chaucer and Shakespeare combined. Few critics today would place him in the same league as Chaucer or Shakespeare in terms of quality, but his patrons at the time included Henry V; Henry VI; and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. As a young man, he met Chaucer, and subsequently befriended his son, Thomas. Remarkably, a graffito by Lydgate survives at Saint Mary's Church at Lydgate, in Suffolk.

Graffito from St Mary's, Lydgate, reading "John Lydgate - made on this Day of Saint Simon and Saint Jude (image is in the Public Domain).

Eastcheap itself functioned as a meat market throughout the Middle Ages. Shakespeare has his characters, Sir John Falstaff, Prince Hal, and Mistress Quickly, carousing in The Boar's Head Tavern in Eastcheap. This was a real tavern, which certainly existed in Shakespeare's time, but may or may not have existed during the reigns of Henry IV and Henry V.

Eastcheap Market in 1598, Hugh Alley (image is in the Public Domain).

The Boar's Head Tavern in 1829, shortly before its demolition (image is in the Public Domain).

The Neo-Gothic building that stands on the site of the tavern today was built as a warehouse in 1868. Photo: BH2008 (licensed under GNU). 

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King, and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon. He is currently working on The Cheapside Tales, a London-based trilogy of historical novels.