the Curtain Theatre

Names

  • the Curtain Theatre

Street/Area/District

  • the Curtain

Descriptions

from the Grub Street Project, by Allison Muri (2006-present)

The Curtain. Along the street called The Curtain was The Curtain playhouse (from 1577 until after 1627). It was situated approximately halfway between Hogg Lane and Holywell Lane. Here Shakespeare's plays Henry V and Romeo and Juliet were first performed. This was the main venue for Shakespeare's plays from 1597 to 1599, when the company moved to The Globe on the south side of the Thames.

from London Past and Present: Its History, Associations, and Traditions, by Henry Benjamin Wheatley and Peter Cunningham (1891)

Curtain (The), Holywell Lane, Shoreditch, a theatre built about 1576, and so named from a piece of ground in Shoreditch, "commonly called the Curtayne," and "sometime appertaining to the Priory of Haliwell now dissolved."l The name points to a fortification in connection with the outworks of the old London Wall. It survives in Curtain Road.

Doe you speake against those places also, whiche are made vppe and builded for such playes and enterludes, as the Theatre and Curtaine is, and other such lyke places besides.—A Treatise against Dicing, Dancing, Plays, etc., 4to, p. 1577.
And neare thereunto [Holywell Priory] are builded two publique-houses for the acting and shewe of comedies, tragedies, and histories for recreation. Whereof one is called the Courtein, the other the Theatre, both standing on the south-west side towards the field.—Stow, ed. 1598, p. 349.

In 1600 the Lords of the Council gave orders for the demolition of the Curtain, but they were not obeyed. On June 22 of that year they wrote to the Lord Mayor and the Justices of Middlesex as follows:—

As wee have done our partes in prescribinge the orders, so unlesse yow perfourme yours in lookinge to the due execution of them, we shall loose our labor.—Halliwell Phillipps, Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 7th ed. 1887, vol. i. p. 367.
The Curtain seems to have fallen into disuse about the commencement of the reign of Charles I., and Malone states (without citing his authority) that it was soon employed only for the exhibition of prize-fighters.—Collier's Annals, vol. iii. p. 272.
It has been generally believed that Shakespeare alludes to the Globe Theatre when he refers to "this wooden O" in Henry the Fifth, but, apart from the improbability of his making a disparaging allusion to the size of his company's new edifice it is not at all likely that the building could have been completed before the return of Lord Essex from Ireland in September 1599. The letter O was used in reference to any object of a circular formation, and there is every probability that it would have been applicable to the Curtain. Now Armin, who was one of Shakespeare's company playing at the Globe in 1600, speaks of himself in his Foole upon Foole published in that year, as the clown at the Curtain Theatre. It may then be inferred that the former Theatre was opened in 1600, and at some time before March 25, the latest date that can be assigned to Every Man out of his Humour.—Halliwell Phillipps, Outlines, 7th ed. 1887, vol. ii. p. 393.
1 Halliwell Phillipps, Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 7th ed. 1887, vol. ii. p. 364.