Salisbury Court Theatre
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The Salisbury Court Theatre was a theatre in 17th century London. It was located in the neighbourhood of Salisbury Court, which was formerly the London residence of the Bishops of Salisbury. Salibury Court was acquired by Richard Sackville in 1564; when Thomas Sackville was created Earl of Dorset in 1604, the building was renamed Dorset House.
According to contemporary chronicler Edmund Howe, "a new faire Play-house" was erected in 1629, just to the west of the medieval walls of the City of London, between Fleet Street and the River Thames, in a building converted from a barn or granary in the grounds of Dorset House. It was a private theatre, the successor to the earlier Whitefriars Theatre and the short-lived Porter's Hall theatre, and was built by Richard Gunnell and William Blagrave at a cost of £1,000. During the 1630s, it was occupied by Queen Henrietta's Men and by Prince Charles' Men; for a time it was a major locus of dramatic activity, a main rival to the theatrical establishment run by Christopher Beeston at the Cockpit and the Red Bull theatres. [See: Richard Brome.]
Salisbury Court was the last theatre to be built before the closing of the theatres in 1642, during the Puritan era. After the theatres were closed, Salisbury Court was sometimes used for other purposes—and sometimes, as through much of 1647, it was used for theatrical performances in contravention of the local authorities. (The players played when they could get away with doing so—which was not always: the London authorities raided the Salisbury Court on 6 October 1647, breaking up a performance of A King and No King by Beaumont and Fletcher.) On 1 January 1649, the London authorities raided all four of the London theatres simultaneously; the actors at the Salisbury Court Theatre and the Cockpit Theatre were arrested, as was a "rope-dancer" or trapeze artist performing at the Fortune Theatre—but the actors at the Red Bull Theatre managed to escape. In March 1649, the authorities destroyed the interior of the Salisbury Court theatre, and the Fortune and the Cockpit too, making them useless for public performances.
After years of being banned in the Interregnum, theatre was again permitted on the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, with the grant of two Letters Patent to two companies to perform "legitimate drama" in London. The Salisbury Court Theatre was refurbished by William Beeston and used for a time by the Duke's Company, patronised by the Duke of York (later James II), from November 1660 to June 1661, when they moved to the nearby Lisle's Tennis Court next to Lincoln's Inn Fields, which they found a better venue. Samuel Pepys records visiting it several times in his diary for early 1661 (often calling it the Whitefriars Theatre).
Pepys' famous Diary provides information on the plays acted at the Salisbury Court Theatre immediately after the theatres re-opened. He saw Fletcher's The Mad Lover on Feb. 9, 1661; Middleton and Rowley's The Changeling on Feb. 23 (Thomas Betterton played De Flores); Massinger's The Bondman on March 1 (Betterton again); Fletcher and Massinger's The Spanish Curate on March 16; Heywood's Love's Mistress on March 2; and Fletcher's Rule a Wife and Have a Wife on April 1. (All dates new style.)[1]
The building burned down in the Great Fire of London in 1666. It was replaced in 1671 by the Dorset Garden Theatre, which was built slightly further south to a design by Christopher Wren.
[edit] Note
- ^ John Downes, Roscius Anglicanus, 1708; Ayer Publishing (reprint), 1968; pp. 68-9.
[edit] References
- G. E. Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 7 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1941-68.
- F. E. Halliday, A Shakespeare Companion 1564-1964, Baltimore, Penguin, 1964.
- 'Whitefriars', Old and New London: Volume 1 (1878), pp. 182-99.
