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The Red Lion Theatre, 1567

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first theater in London

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Elizabethan playhouse located in Whitechapel just outside the City of London

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owners decided to build a new theater called "The Theater"

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The Theater, 1576

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the building of this theater was a transformational event in theater history

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before the building of the theater

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professional actors were legally classified with vagabonds, vagrants, and other disreputable types called "masterless men"

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people who were not under control of an authority figure

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these players were traveling players

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used makeshift stages such as the courtyard of an inn or a pub, a scaffold or a back of a wagon to perform popular often sub-literate pieces

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brought together drama, song and dance, mime, and scatological humor

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what the theater did was provide a very impressive, sizable and permanent home

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made a theater company commercially viable

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within two decades of the building of this theater there were four such buildings in London

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so the last two decades of the 16th century in England were very similar to the early days of Hollywood when the film industry was created and exploded in popularity

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around 1600, London passed laws suppressing theater companies and restricting them outside the inner are of the city

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laws also required patronage of theater companies

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this ensured that somebody in position of power were responsible for them

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eventually the theater district established itself on the south bank of the Thames called in southern part of town called Southwark

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but this was the unsavory entertainment district

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pubs, brothels and bear baiting

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theater was always something unsavory, lowbrow, and something that should be kept away from polite society

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Sir John Davie's on plays

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"We see at all the playhouse dores, when ended is the play, the daunce, and song, a thousand townsemen, gentlemen, and whores, porters and serving-men together throng."

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at the end of plays, the actors would often get up and do a song and dance