Blackfriars Theatre

Renaissance hall playhouse and private theatre. Best known is the second Blackfriars, which was opened by Richard Burbage in 1596 and where, from the 1609/1610 season onwards, in addition to the Globe, Shakespeare’s acting company performed their plays.

Richard Farrant’s Blackfriars

In 1576, Richard Farrant leased parts of a former Dominican monastery in the City of London and opened the Blackfriars Theatre. This theatre, which was the first commercial indoor playhouse of Renaissance London, was used by the Chapel Children, a theatre company for boys, in order to perform their plays to the public. In 1596, sixteen years after Farrant’s death, James Burbage, father of Richard Burbage, bought the monastery’s old frater as well as several other rooms for the sum of £600 and opened the second Blackfriars.

James Burbage’s Blackfriars

The theatre was located on the first floor of the old monastery, which was known as the “Upper Frater”, a big chamber that was divided into several parts and which could be reached via circular stairs. Even though the reconstruction of Blackfriars Theatre is quite difficult - there are no extant specifications for it but only some contemporary legal documents or notes of visitors telling us about it - we know that the playhouse must have been about 66 feet long and 46 feet wide, and that it consisted of a stage, which was placed at the hall’s narrow side opposite the entrance, probably three galleries, which were arranged around the stage on three sides, a tiring-house, which stood behind the stage end and provided separate access for members of the gallantry, who viewed the play from the stage itself, boxes, a pit and several rooms above the hall.

The stage of Blackfriars was much smaller than those of London’s outdoor theatres, which, amongst other things, was due to the fact that boxes for the well-off spectators were arranged along its sides. Furthermore, space on the stage was limited as members of the audience were often sitting on chairs on the stage itself or settling themselves down on its strewing during the performance. As Gurr remarks: “Add to the smaller size [of the stage] all the well-dressed feathered and sword-wearing gallants occupying stools on the stage itself and we must conclude that the acting space was certainly cramped, the effect an intimacy that the open-air stages never enjoyed” (195).

Altogether, Blackfriars Theatre sat roughly 500 spectators, which was approximately one fifth of the capacity of London’s public playhouses. The theatre’s admission prices to the plays started with a sixpence, which gained the viewers entry to the topmost gallery, and ended with at least two shillings, which enabled richer playgoers to sit on the stage itself or in the boxes flanking it.

Performances in Blackfriars Theatre were usually conducted in the afternoon, to which purpose the windows were darkened and, above the stage and the auditorium, candelabra were lowered, the candles of which had to be trimmed in each break between the acts.

Bibliography

Castrop, Helmut. “Das elisabethanische Theater: Die privaten Theater: Das Blackfriars-Theater.” Shakespeare Handbuch: Die Zeit - der Mensch - das Werk - die Nachwelt. Ed. Ina Schabert. 5., durchges. und erg. Stuttgart: Kröner, 2009. 92–95.

Gurr, Andrew. The Shakespearean Stage: 1574 - 1642. 4th ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.