The View of London from the North and the Playhouses in Holywell

Summary

All but one of the many views of London printed during Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline times show the city from the south and so can and nearly always do include places of entertainment on the south bank of the Thames. The exception calls itself The View of the Cittye of London from the North towards the Sowth. It does not show the south bank or its places of entertainment, but it does show at least one of the playhouses on the north side of the city, and in doing so provides the only contemporary picture of it, or them.

The View is a panoramic view rather than a map-view. It purports, that is, to show the city as one might see it in a photograph. Its topography extends from Holywell in the northeast (on the left) to Westminster in the southwest (on the right) and is about 1039 nun wide and 96 mm high. It does not mention its artist, engraver, publisher, place of publication, or date. People who have written about it have argued that it belongs to either 1600 or some years earlier. A single copy was thought to survive, in the Library of the University of Utrecht (formerly MS 1198, f. 83, now Gr. form. 12), accompanying a manuscript account by Abraham Booth of a visit to London, 1629-30. In the summer of 1996, however, Clive and Philip Burden found another and better copy in their own collections. They deal in and collect antique maps, books, and prints at Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire.