Dan Snow's History Hit - Shakespeare's Shoreditch Theatre with Heather Knight

Episode Date: April 22, 2021

In this archive episode, Dan visits the site of The Theatre, the 16th-century playhouse where some of Shakespeare's works were first performed, to investigate the archaeology with Heather Knight, Senior Archaeologist from the Museum of London Archaeology.

Hello everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. William Shakespeare died this week in 1616 and he was baptised this week in 1564. So this week is all about William Shakespeare, the bard. We've had him on the podcast many times, we haven't had him personally, but we've had people talking about his plays, his poetry, his flipping genius on this podcast many times. So it's difficult for us to select exactly who or what we should run with today. I'm going to bring one out of the archive in which I visit, because this reminds me of a time when we used to go out and do things, dig holes in the ground, look in them, go for a pint afterwards. It was brill. This is a trip I took around Shakespeare's Shoreditch Theatre. As Shoreditch is rapidly becoming the most desirable and trendy

area of London, a part of London in which Team History Hit Towers is based. Yes, we're going up in the world. We now have office space and it's in Shoreditch. Anyway, as the builders have been in constructing giant new shiny buildings and apartments in Shoreditch, they have discovered a theatre that we think once hosted Shakespeare's merry band of players. Can you imagine being there in that audience and looked at the archaeology, looked at what the remains have to tell us with Heather Knight, Senior Archaeologist from Museum of London Archaeology. This was a huge treat. I hope you enjoy this episode. If you want to listen to more back episodes of this podcast, deep, deep back into the mists of time, you can do so only at historyhit.tv. It's our digital history channel. No adverts on the podcast, no adverts at all. You just listen to them all. You have a nice old time listening to the podcast without listening to my ridiculous adverts. And then you could also watch hundreds of hours

of videos on there as well, all about history, proper history for proper history fans. Please go and check that out, historyhit.tv. But in the meantime, here's the very brilliant heather knight taking me around shakespeare's shoreditch theatre right heather we've entered uh we've come behind some wooden hoardings we're on we're in a building site we're in the heart of shoreditch tell me me, there's some scaffolding, there's a big hole in the ground, there's lots of mud, there's an excavator. What are we doing here?

Well, I'm doing the archaeology, and we're doing that before a new building is built on the site. And this site's really important because it's the site of one of London's earliest playhouses, and that's called the Theatre. And is it connected with the bard himself yes it is that's why people get very excited but there's so many other people that are connected to it as well um but yeah it's shakespeare performed here some of his early plays were performed here

merchant of venice probably romeo and juliet now how do we i mean how did you stumble across this how do we know that that we're actually standing now on the remains of this remarkable Tudor playhouse? Well these buildings were of interest to historians in the 19th century and they worked through you know the historic documents that existed so they looked at leases and that kind of thing and worked out that the theatre was probably in this kind of area of Shoreditch. And so we came to do an initial evaluation way back in 2008 to see if any of those remains existed. And did that involve looking under the ground?

It did. We did some trial trenching and we had some remains that were the right shape, the right size, the right date for us to say we'd probably found the playhouse. And then we came back and did further excavation and yes, we probably have about a fifth of its footprint on the site. And when it was built, what did he call it? Well, he called it the theatre. And to us today, that doesn't sound very imaginative. But in 16th century London, that was pretty much a new word.

Most other buildings are named after place. The Curtin, for instance, is named after Curtin Close, the field it's built in. So that's an interesting point. Why did Burbage choose that word? Up until then, theatre had been used in the English language, but in the context of sort of blood and guts, like the Theatre of War, for instance. So is he trying to reference the Colosseum, for instance?

This is the first polygonal structure that's built. So is that what he's doing? He's trying to make sort of London's version of the Colosseum, because if you look at several engravings that sort of date from the 1570s, which show the Colosseum called the Theatre of Rome. So is that his thinking? We don't know. So we'll go and look at the archaeology in a sec, but while we're still here on the 21st century ground level,

what are we seeing and what is sort of under us right now? Can you you orient and take me around the site well it's quite a small site i think people are quite surprised when they they come in and it's like you know it is it is a tight space it's only what 22 meters by 16 meters um so at the moment we're digging on the north side so that's outside of the playhouse footprint and we're into the buildings that existed before Burbage built the theatre. And that's the monastic remains of John the Baptist Holywell. So this was a monastery? Well, it was home to a community of Augustinian nuns. It obviously ran into a bit of trouble with Henry VIII in 1539

and at that point the nuns were pensioned off but some of the big buildings at that point were demolished but some of the smaller more useful buildings carried on functioning and those buildings included the bakehouse and the brewhouse and we've got evidence of those two buildings on the site. So amazing so we've also evidence of those two buildings on the site. So amazing so we've also found some some fantastic late medieval buildings that's exciting and then what so tell me how it comes to be a playhouse just to run me through the history after the dissolution by Henry VIII. Okay so we have dissolution of Holywell in 1539 Burbage takes up the lease on this small piece of land in 1576 and builds a playhouse. But to do that, he has to actually demolish and remodel some of the buildings.

And we have evidence of Burbage's remodelling, particularly of the bakehouse. And why does he want to build a playhouse? What's the general, what's the trends that are leading him to do that well he's quite interesting because he's sort of he's an interesting mix he's sort of actor impresario he's a joiner so he's got this kind of he's got a good skill set he'd already tried um to do a venture of building a playhouse but that was the red lion out in stepney in sort of you know 1567 ish but that didn't last very long so again it's one of those why here why why 1576 is one of those great great questions do you think the archaeology is going to help us solve that question or is that one for the

the uh the letters the sources the text from the Well, that's the great thing about this period is because we can actually step over and use other resources. We're not just looking at things buried in the ground and we can actually have interdisciplinary conversations with people. So it's talking to historians, talking to other people, saying, you know, how does all this fit together? And I think the answers will start to come together when we look at this building, the theatre, in relation to its neighbouring building, the Curtain, which is just 200 metres down the road.

And why this part of town? What's interesting for those of you who don't know London, don't know the UK that well, Shoreditch is now again the hip and happening part of London where people are going out to socialise and eat and watch stuff. Isn't it interesting that that seems to be what's happening here nearly 500 years ago? It's exactly it. It was the place people came for entertainment. You know they escape that crowded city, they can come out take a walk in the fields because Shoreditch at that point was fairly rural. They can sort of have a nice afternoon out, and it's the place to go to watch a play, a dance, comedy, whatever takes their fancy. And so these people are entrepreneurs when they're building these theatres. Okay, so talk to me, you've got a plan in your hands.

What shape, what do we give people a sense of what it might have looked like? And also, tell me, how is the archaeology changing what we think it might have looked like? Well, although the theatre is referenced in quite a few legal documents, none of those documents reference actually what size or shape it was. And we know it was taken down in 1598, and part of the material, well, the materials were taken over to bankside and they were used in the making of the globe so for a long time people thought that well these two buildings must be identical so the globe over on bankside we have you know contemporary images of it it's

quite a large building maybe 16 17 18 sided but it wasn't until we actually came here found the remains and realized they actually have more in common with the Rose, which is a much smaller building. So we're looking at a building that's 14-sided, 22 metres across. And so I think that's really kind of changed our understanding that this building wasn't maybe as big as people initially thought it would have been. I hesitate to use the phrase, but it feels like a bare pit, a very concentrated space. Would it be quite high banked seats and everyone focusing on the space in the middle?

I think it's quite an intense space. Yes, it would be quite an intimate space. So you have seating all around, you have stage on one side, people standing in front of the stage. So on a packed afternoon, it would be quite an intense experience, I think. Now, you are an archaeologist and you work for Museum of London Archaeology. You're not a cultural historian, but just briefly, why did London in this period see this explosion of interest in theatre going?

If I can answer that. I need a new job now. If I can answer that. I need a new job now. It's one of those really interesting moments in time. We've got a rise in the population in London. So, I mean, we've always had performance in London. You know, in the innyards, people performing in the innyards before, before the advent of the playhouses and all the way through.

So it wasn't a particularly new thing we didn't suddenly invent drama in 1576 so people were used to going out used to being entertained but suddenly you've got a rise in a population so you've also got a rise maybe in the middle classes so you've got more spending money and you've got land to build these buildings on so with the dissolution you get all this land that's freed up around in the suburbs. So people can, like Burbage, can go and build large new structures, these purpose-built buildings, rather than repurposing, say, an inn yard. We meant to mention the big guy. We need to mention Shakespeare.

I know you're always talking about everyone else here, but knowing my producer, he will put Shakespeare in the title of this podcast I'm looking at you Nat um and so uh do we know how his association with this site began or how did he like being here do you know anything about his relationship with this place well Shakespeare's obviously you know early career is is one of those things that's kind of missing missing in missing in history but I think it's really important to kind of understand that he didn't invent this. He arrived in London and this was a kind of tradition

that he kind of was engaged with, but very established. Here in Shoreditch, we have the theatre and the curtain. He worked in both. He was living here. He became part of that community that was established you know sort of based around hollywell lane really you're listening to dad's history bit heather knight is taking around a shoreditch theatre that may have been the set literally for some of shakespeare's plays more after this okay tristan you got 50 seconds go right so dan's given me a few seconds to sell the ancients More after this. discoveries. This seems to be the oldest known dated depiction of the animal world as far as we can tell anywhere in the world. We've got the big names. It's one of those great things Pompeii,

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and haven't been thrown into a muddy hole, so... Shall we go and do that then? Yeah, lead the way. OK, what are we seeing here? Well, we're looking on the north side of the site and running down the edge of the trench on the towards the northern edge of the trench is quite a substantial chalk and ragstone wall and initially we thought that was an external wall to the bakehouse but when we came back in the summer we actually found ovens to the south of it so we realized actually it's an internal wall and at the far end of the trench you can see a sort of

big uh round masonry structure which is the base of a bread oven so it's just one of our ovens that we found on the site it's an extraordinary condition there's a wonderful big round stone in the middle now it's all black is that me being naive or is that the effect of the um the charring the heat over the years that's exactly what it is and we get big sort of black stripy layers which is charcoal that they've raked out from the fire wonderful it's very well constructed because you could you could have a fire in there today couldn't you it is rather nice and rather fun to it is um the round stone that you've heard to in the middle is actually a reused millstone so they've kind of repurposed uh materials that they've they find you know lying around and now we are looking at buildings that were here before

burbage shakespeare and others used this theater what what period do you think these monastic buildings date to well the ones we're looking at now probably aren't the earliest uh phase of the monastic buildings uh currently we're thinking they're sort of 14th 15th century but they carry on in use all the way through and they aren't actually demolished until around 1600 so these buildings are repurposed and reused by burbage in the late 16th century. So theatre-goers here to watch Romeo and Juliet and all the other wonderful plays would have been eating pasties and buns and cakes produced in that oven?

Well, we're not certain it actually carried on having the same function. Because we know from the demolition deposits within that particular oven that we're looking at that it probably went out of use in around the mid 16th century so how they're using this building again is one of those big research questions that we're going to be trying to answer right there's a ladder there it's about six foot below the modern ground level why don't you lead the way and i'll follow you it's all right we're down in the pit now i like all archaeologists you've come alive the minute we get in the pit you guys the ears go back the eyes brighten we've got lots of um archaeologists

here working with their trials you may be able to hear the scraping um we're standing next to the remarkable oven with its big lovely millstone in the middle uh so then we've got a gentleman here working at this wall which might be the external wall no well we this is um alex has done a really good job of cleaning up at the minute it's the internal wall we originally thought it was an external wall but as you see it's quite substantial but we have ovens on both sides of it and the wall at the west end of the trench might be the end wall of the building again you can see it's made of chalk these walls are sort of chalk ragstone with lime mortar so this end wall of the building again you can see it's made of chalk these walls are sort of chalk ragstone with lime mortar so this was part of the theatre complex we're not sure how it

was used no that's one of the great questions we can see there is uh remodeling these buildings there's particularly the bakehouse it because they shorten it and they narrow it to allow for the construction of that big 14-sided 22 meter across three-story theater space but how they're actually used are they um are they private spaces are they spaces for the audience as well you know how how does this work with this external space for instance these are really big questions that the archaeology is posing. Could be a dressing room. It could be. I'm just trying to get excited about the actors all being here.

So now we're turning around, we're facing south, we've put our backs to that external wall, that interior wall, the big chunky one, and the backs to the bread oven. Now the theatre's walls or foundations are a metre into this protective, behind this concrete thing that you've just put in um yeah there's uh you've got the concrete ground beam which um forms the top where the basement space will be in the new building um and the theater stood about a meter two meters further south so we know it was quite close.

It's almost touching the remodelled bakehouse and again the front of the building comes round and it almost touches the remodelled brew house because Burbage also was using the brew house that went along the street front. So if we'd been standing right here in the 1570s

and early 80s, there would have been a metre, I might almost be touching it now, three storeys high, the external wall of this theatre. Yeah, we have contemporary accounts that says they were generally three storeys, one above the other. If we look at, say, the Rose or the Globe or the Hope, they all seem to follow that model of being three storeys high. It would appear almost circular because it has 14 sides.

So it's sort of an angled building, but not very sharp angles. We don't know the material. We were sorry. We don't know the kind of the the color say of the outside of the building but we do know it had a tiled roof so we found lots of tiles within the demolition deposits associated with the theater so we we know it has a tiled roof we're not sure you know what the what the paint scheme was for instance instance, on the outside. I imagine it would be quite bright and vibrant because Burbage wants to attract people to his new playhouse. And I hesitate to mention its famous cousin across the river,

but when people look at the modern reconstruction of the Globe Theatre, is that useful or do you think it's unhelpful? It was very useful. I mean, particularly in how do you build a building like like that um it's much bigger than the theater would have been obviously the modern globe has a thatch roof whereas this has a tiled roof um but essentially it does the same thing you've got um galleries with seating around an open yard the open yard is in front of the stage. Imagine the theatre is a smaller version of the modern globe.

So we've come back up here into the Porter Cavern now, where it's nice and warm, and we're going to talk about the future. But before I talk about the future, I want to know about the story, about how the theatre stopped being here, because it's quite dramatic, isn't it? about the story about how the theatre stopped being here because it's quite dramatic, isn't it? Well, yes, tradition says that it was stolen away one kind of winter's night in sort of Christmas 1598. Wait a second, how do you steal a theatre?

I'm intrigued because this is a three-storey building. It's 22 metres across. It would have been made by that point, you know, it was made out of oak, by which point, you know, it would have been quite dry and seasoned and all the joints would have tightened up i'm not sure how you can take a building like that down even now in one day let alone at the end of the 16th century so it possibly was done over christmas period when everybody's away sort of um when the landlord giles allen is away shakespeare and his mates

just dismantled it and nicked it um well they i think what they might have done is actually just taken the usable material from it because material is expensive they were trying to build their new building the globe over on bank side so to actually take it apart and repurpose some of the expensive materials in it actually made sense. And that was the end of, whatever the truth of this sort of amazing story, that was the end of drama on this site, was it? It was the end of drama on this site. It wasn't the end of drama in Shoreditch because its neighbouring counterpart, the Curtain, carries on as a playhouse through

into the 1620s. But for the theatre, it was the end of its life. And then it was built over and various things have happened until you guys have brought it to light again. What is the plan here? Because you've got quite an innovative, it's not just, there's going to be, it's a building project, there's going to be a proper commercial building on top of us, but this is not going to be buried underneath lots of steel and cement, is it? No, it's not. Now it's come to light, it's going to stay in the light. The ground floor space will be an exhibition space. The shape of the building will be referenced within the materials they're using within the floor.

There's going to be a viewing panel within the floor so you can actually look down at the physical remains of the building. And there'll be an exhibition space next to those remains where objects from the site, complemented by loaned objects, will really tell the story of Shakespeare and Shoreditch and those beginnings of early drama in London you're gonna you're gonna be able to see the outlines of the foundations of this theatre so it's going to be quite an exciting exhibition in terms of what you're gonna have to do to interpret and bring these objects and ideas to life well yes because it's quite nice because the space has been um designed so

we can have kind of a quite an immersive experience using av to really kind of feel like you're back in that space in 16th century shoreditch nice i can't wait to come see it when can we expect that to be added to the already packed list of things that you have to go and do if you come as a tourist who loves history to London. Well, hopefully by this time next year, we won't be sitting up here in the Porter Cabin. We'll be downstairs in a lovely, beautiful exhibition space. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me on site.

And good luck with the rest of the excavation. Well, thank you. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All the traditions of ours excavation. Well, thank you. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Hi everyone, thanks for reaching the end of this podcast. Most of you are probably asleep, so I'm talking to your snoring forms, but anyone who's awake, it would be great if you could do me a quick favour,

head over to wherever you get your podcasts and rate it five stars and then leave a nice glowing review. It makes a huge difference for some reason to how these podcasts do. Madness, I know, but them's the rules. Then we go further up the charts, more people listen to us and everything will be awesome. So thank you so much. Now sleep well.