The Theatre at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1605

Summary

British Library Additional MS 15505 fol. 21 is cautiously catalogued as ‘the plan of some theatre, probably in Germany’. The catalogue was made in the nineteenth century when the drawing was transferred along with other documents from its original place among the Sloane manuscripts, and there seems no reason to lend credence to the tentative ascription beyond the fact that a number of these other documents are German, though none has a theatrical subject. In fact the drawing (plate II), which shows the section of a theatre as well as its plan, is covered in writing in a neat italic hand, all of it in the English of the early seventeenth century. It is not the work of some British traveller recounting what he has seen abroad, in Germany or elsewhere, because the comments are prescriptive rather than descriptive, the work of a designer, not a mere observer. Indeed there is reason to believe that this sheet of paper carries the earliest English theatre design yet to come to light, the design of the arrangements made in the hall at Christ Church, Oxford, for the visit of James I in August 1605, when he saw a set of academic plays which marked the first recorded introduction of perspective scenery into English drama.