Shakespeare and Ben Jonson
Whatever you think of Shoreditch, you’re unlikely to consider it the root of London’s Theatreland. Yet, back in 1576, it was home to the capital’s first playhouse.
Throughout the Middle Ages, plays became hugely popular. But the actors, minstrels, jugglers and the like didn’t perform inside. Instead, troupes would travel from town to town, taking the entertainment to a new audience every day.
They would perform religious mystery plays on church steps, the more ribald productions in inns and taverns.
But the growing popularity of the more formal, many-act plays which were now being produced by the likes of William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson meant that cash could be spent on a permanent playhouse.
In 1576, the great tragic actor Richard Burbage, who was running his Lord Chamberlain’s theatre company out of Shoreditch, raised the cash to build the capital’s first proper theatre.
The Theatre, as it was imaginatively dubbed, lay at the corner of New Inn Yard and what is now Great Eastern Street and it was a huge success.
William Shakespeare joined the company when he arrived in London in 1592 and, in the six years following, Shoreditch saw debuts of the Bard’s earliest work – Henry VI, Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, Romeo and Juliet and many more.
Globe timbers
The Theatre was demolished in 1598, its timbers taken to construct the world-famous Globe Theatre at Bankside, which was uncovered again in the 1990s.
But Shoreditch’s theatrical story was just beginning. By now Burbage’s Curtain Theatre was doing a roaring trade at Holywell Lane, opposite the west end of Bethnal Green Road.
Shoreditch itself had started life as a religious, rather than a theatrical, hamlet. Like many villages it was born at the crossing of two Roman roads – in this case Kingsland Road and Old Street.
First mentioned in 1148 as Scoredich, it was the site of the new St Leonard’s Church in the 12th century, and in 1152 the Augustinian priory of Holywell.
But by the late 1500s, Holywell priory was gone and the theatre was built on its redundant grounds. Colourful characters began to replace the holy men who had sought sanctuary from the City.
Many of the players are buried in St Leonard’s churchyard. And in 1598, Ben Jonson fought a duel with Gabriel Spencer in Hoxton Fields, killing him. Spencer’s body lies in the churchyard in Shore-ditch High Street, alongside that of Burbage, and Henry VIII’s jester, Will Sommers.
Around the 1680s, Shore-ditch changed again. Most of the actors had migrated west and it became the focus for charitable works, as men made rich by the City looked to bequeath their wealth.
Geffrye Museum
In 1695, Robert Aske endowed the Haberdashers almshouses and a school in Pitfield Street. Then in 1715, London mayor Robert Geffrye built the Ironmongers almshouses in Kingsland Road – now they house the Geffrye Museum.
By the 1850s, as London’s population boomed, Shore-ditch had a population of more than 100,000. Today it’s the slightly scruffy north-west corner of the East End.
But wander round St Leonard’s churchyard and you can almost see the ghosts of Shakespeare, Jonson and the rest of London’s first theatre community.