Category:Theater

The Enterprise

James Burbage, a sharer with the company of Leicester's players in the 1570s, oversaw the building of the Theater in Shoreditch in 1576. He leased the property from Giles Allen on 13 April for a term of twenty-one years (to 25 March 1597). For money, he turned to his brother-in-law, John Brayne, a successful grocer who had recently been the principal backer of the short-lived Red Lion playhouse at Mile End, 1567-9. The Theater was supposed to cost £200, but expenses rose to £700. The profits were supposed to pay off Brayne first, then be shared between the men, but the partners fell into dispute about the verbal agreements between them and the material profits from business at the playhouse. Brayne died in 1586 a bankrupt, and his widow filed a suit in common law against Burbage that set off a sequence of suits that would outlive the widow and her cohort, Robert Miles. For all intents and purposes, the Burbage family had prevailed in the suits by 1595.

Law Suits

Following the network of suits and countersuits between the Brayne faction on the one hand (the widow and Brayne's partner in an inn in Whitechapel, Robert Miles) and the Burbages on the other (initially James, but ultimately also Cuthbert) is challenging. For those seeking a narrative with documentary support, see Ingram, 182-218. For those seeking primarily the documents and the scholarly trail of discovery, see Berry, "A Handlist." Berry divides the documents into four categories and provides a headnote to each group.

Closure and Deconstruction

Scholarship

Berry, Herbert, "The Theatre", in Wickham 330-87. ——, ed. The First Public Playhouse: the Theatre in Shoreditch, 1576-1598. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1979.
——, "Aspects of the Design and Use of the Theatre in Shoreditch," in Shakespeare's Playhouses. New York: AMS Press, 1987. 1-17.
——, "A Handlist of Documents about the Theatre in Shoreditch," in Shakespeare's Playhouses. New York: AMS Press, 1987. 19-44.
Ingram, William. The Business of Playing. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992.

Lost Plays