
Red Lion: Archaeologists 'find London's earliest theatre' - pseudolus
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-52983008
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rozab
In what possible sense could a building from 1567 be 'London's earliest
theatre'? Has the journalist misunderstood something about it being the
earliest of the Elizabethan era?

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oldlondonta
I just finished The Great Courses course The History of London and they spend
quite a bit of time talking about theatre in London and it was pretty much
banned/heavily controlled for most of London's history. As a result London
just didn't have purpose built theatres very early compared to a lot of other
cities.

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dang
That's fascinating. I assume it was banned/controlled for religious reasons?
But then the religion doesn't fork until 1534 (Church of England), so why
would it have been banned earlier, and why the difference with other
countries?

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oldlondonta
I relistened to snippets from the course and I think my previous comment about
banning for most of history was wrong though the title still right.

I was thinking of the formation of the Kings Company and Dukes Company but
they were after not before this. From what I've gathered from relistening to
snippets from the course and a bit of Googling the actual answer is lack of
demand. London was abandoned for hundreds of years after the Romans left, then
there wasn't a big interest in the arts for a long time because of other
priorities like being regularly sacked/plagues/etc. I do know theatres were
still kept out of the city proper once they started popping up but I can't
find why other than again fear of plague.

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efreak
See this comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23499672](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23499672)

