8 - Dramatic achievements

Summary

In 1575, when Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare were eleven years old, Ben Jonson three, and John Lyly and George Peele Oxford students, they could hardly have envisaged their eventual careers as actors, playwrights, theatrical administrators and investors. There were no permanent theatres in London. Playing in the area was irregular, produced by traveling companies performing occasionally in inn yards. Yet the next year saw the construction of a playhouse at Newington Butts, the opening of the Theatre in Shoreditch to the north, and the movement of the Chapel Children into a hall theatre in the Blackfriars, thus establishing both the types of theatres - outdoor, multistory “public” amphitheatres and smaller, enclosed “private” theatres - and the types of company personnel - adult men, with a few boys to act the women's parts, or entirely boy choristers - that would obtain until the closing of the theatres in 1642. In 1583 a playing company bearing the Queen's name was established. In 1594 a reorganization officially restricted playing to two companies at two playhouses, the Lord Chamberlain's Men at the Theatre and the Lord Admiral's Men at the Rose.