Francis Langley

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Francis Langley (1550 – 1601) was a theatre builder and theatrical producer in Elizabethan era London. After James Burbage and Philip Henslowe, Langley was the third significant entrepreneurial figure active at the height of the development of English Renaissance theatre.

Langley was a goldsmith by profession, and also held the office of "Alnager and Searcher of Cloth"—he was an offical quality inspector of fabric. His brother-in-law was a clerk for the Privy Council; Langley had been appointed to his Alnager's post through a recommendation from Sir Francis Walsingham. Langley became involved in theatre in the mid-1590s, and operated much as Henslowe did, contracting individual actors and troupes to work exclusively for him, and serving as their reliable creditor (a cynic might use the ugly term "loan shark"). Langley, however, did not leave the relatively abundant documentary record that Henslowe did; his affairs are much more mysterious and difficult to untangle.

Langley's central achievement in Elizabethan drama was the building of the Swan Theatre in Southwark, on the south shore of the River Thames across from the City of London, in 1595-6. The Swan was the fourth in the series of large public playhouses in London, after Burbage's The Theatre (1576) and Curtain (1577) and Henslowe's Rose (1587-8)—though the Swan was in its time the most well-appointed and visually striking of the four. Langley had purchased the Manor of Paris Garden as early as May 1589, for the sum of £850. (Paris Garden was a "liberty," outside the control of the Corporation of London, at the extreme western end of the Bankside district of Southwark. The Manor in question had been part of the monastery of Bermondsey, which like all English monasteries was dissolved and passed into private hands when Henry VIII suppressed the religious orders after his break with Rome.) In November of 1594, the Lord Mayor of London complained to Lord Burghley about Langley's plans to build another theatre on the Bankside (the Rose and the Beargarden, the bear-baiting ring, were already located there).

The Lord Mayor's protest had no discernible effect; the Swan was certainly ready by February 1597, when Langley signed a contract with Pembroke's Men to play at his new theatre. Their contract mentions that the theatre had already been in use for plays, which points to activity in the summer of 1596. The playing company involved is not named; but given Shakespeare's odd connection with Langley (see below), it might have been the Lord Chamberlain's Men.

If there was a period of good business in the spring and summer of 1597, it definitely did not last: in July came the scandal centered on Thomas Nashe and Ben Jonson's play The Isle of Dogs. On July 28 the Privy Council, angered by what it termed "very seditious and scandalous matter" in that play, ordered all the London theatres shut down for the remainder of the summer. When the prohibition on the other theatres was lifted in the autumn, it was kept on Langley's Swan, effectively dealing his theatre business a blow from which it never recovered. (Langley was in trouble with the authorities over another matter as well, a stolen diamond that he had fenced or attempted to fence; and this may well have been an additional reason for the suppression of his theatre.)

Five of the actors in Pembroke's Men, now out of work, defected to the Admiral's Men, and apparently took some of the company's playscripts with them. Langley sued them, though the outcome of the case is unclear from the surviving records. It seems likely that Langley reached some kind of resolution with Henslowe, for the actors remained with their new company. Langley's position at this time could not have been a strong one. The remnant of the Pembroke's Men company, perhaps with some replacement members, was touring outside of London in 1598-9, in Bath, Bristol, Dover, and other towns. With no steady dramatic activity, little more is known of Langley for the last few years of his life. After his death, his Paris Garden estate was sold in January 1602. His theatre lived on after him, hosting miscellaneous events—fencing contests, stage-magic spectacles—and eventually becoming a venue for drama once again; the Lady Elizabeth's Men were playing there in the 1611-13 period.

Langley also had a cryptic connection with William Shakespeare. In November of 1596 two writs of attachment, similar to modern restraining orders, were issued to the sheriff of Surrey, the shire in which Southwark is located. One involves Francis Langley versus two parties named William Gardener and William Wayte; the other involves William Wayte versus Langley, two women named Anne Lee and Dorothy Soer...and William Shakespeare. Shakespeare may have been connected with Pembroke's Men in the early 1590s, since they played at least two of his earliest works, Titus Andronicus and Henry VI, part 3; but by 1596 he was with the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and his connection with Langley is obscure. Gardener was a corrupt Surrey justice of the peace, and Wayte was his stepson; Lee and Soer are mere names on a legal document. Gardener died a year later, in November 1597; the story behind this affair remains unknown.

[edit] References

• E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923.
• F. E. Halliday, A Shakespeare Companion 1564-1964, Baltimore, Penguin, 1964.