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TY - ELEC
A1 - Estill, Laura
ED - Jenstad, Janelle
T1 - Whitefriars Theatre
T2 - The Map of Early Modern London
ET - 6.6
PY - 2021
DA - 2021/06/30
CY - Victoria
PB - University of Victoria
LA - English
UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/6.6/WHIT17.htm
UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/6.6/xml/standalone/WHIT17.xml
ER -
One of the lesser known halls or private playhouses of Renaissance London, the Whitefriars, was home to two different boy playing companies, each of which operated under several different names. Whitefriars produced many famous boy actors, some of whom later went on to greater fame in adult companies. At the Whitefriars playhouse in 1607–1608, the Children of the King’s Revels catered to a homogenous audience with a particular taste for homoerotic puns and situations, which resulted in a small but significant body of plays that are markedly different from those written for the amphitheatres and even for other hall playhouses.
Project Manager, 2020-2021. Assistant Project Manager, 2019-2020. Research Assistant, 2018-2020. Kate LeBere completed her BA (Hons.) in History and English at the University of Victoria in 2020. She published papers in
Programmer, 2018-present. Junior Programmer, 2015-2017. Research Assistant, 2014-2017. Joey Takeda was a graduate student at the University of British Columbia in the Department of English (Science and Technology research stream). He completed his BA honours in English (with a minor in Women’s Studies) at the University of Victoria in 2016. His primary research interests included diasporic and indigenous Canadian and American literature, critical theory, cultural studies, and the digital humanities.
Data Manager, 2015-2016. Research Assistant, 2013-2015. Tye completed his undergraduate honours degree in English at the University of Victoria in 2015.
Director of Pedagogy and Outreach, 2015–present. Associate Project Director, 2015–present. Assistant Project Director, 2013-2014. MoEML Research Fellow, 2013. Kim McLean-Fiander comes to
Janelle Jenstad is Associate Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of
Dr. Laura Estill is Assistant Professor of English at Texas A&M University. She is editor of the World Shakespeare Bibliography. Her book,
Laura was one of MoEML’s earliest contributors, having participated in
Programmer at the University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre (HCMC) who maintained the
Programmer at the University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre (HCMC). Martin ported the MOL project from its original PHP incarnation to a pure eXist database implementation in the fall of 2011. Since then, he has been lead programmer on the project and has also been responsible for maintaining the project schemas. He was a co-applicant on MoEML’s 2012 SSHRC Insight Grant.
Actor with the
Playwright and pirate.
Playwright.
Actor with the
Actor. Son of
Playwright, translator, and poet.
Poet and historian.
Playwright.
Playwright, poet, and author.
Poet. Helped establish Whitefriars Theatre.
Member of the
Choirmaster and composer.
King of Scotland
Poet and playwright.
Playwright and poet.
Playwright. Buried at St. Saviour (Southwark).
Playwright.
Courtier.
Actor with the
Poet and playwright.
Playwright. Buried at St. Saviour (Southwark).
Playwright.
Queen consort of Scotland
Helped establish Whitefriars Theatre.
Financier of Whitefriars Theatre.
Financier of Whitefriars Theatre.
Financier of Whitefriars Theatre.
Financier of Whitefriars Theatre.
Musician. Helped manage Whitefriars Theatre.
Helped manage Whitefriars Theatre.
Helped manage Whitefriars Theatre. Not to be confused with
Helped manage Whitefriars Theatre. Not to be confused with
Amateur playwright.
Amateur playwright.
Amateur playwright. Not to be confused with
Amateur playwright.
Amateur playwright. Not to be confused with
Actor and playwright.
Clown.
Actor with the
Dramatic character in
Dramatic character in
Dramatic character in
Dramatic character in
Dramatic character in
Dramatic character in
Dramatic character in
The city of London, not to be confused with the allegorical character (
This page points to the district known as Whitefriars. For the theatre, see Whitefriars Theatre.
Located in Farringdon Within Ward, Ludgate was a gate built by the Romans (Carlin and Belcher 80). for his owne honor
(Stow 1:1).
Middle Temple was one of the four Inns of Court
Salisbury Court Theatre was a private indoor theatre owned by Richard Gunnell and William Blagrove.
According to Weinreb, the theatre was built in
The history of the two Blackfriars theatres is long and fraught with legal and political struggles. The story begins in
For information about the Globe, a modern map marking the site where the it once
stood, and a walking tour that will take you to the site, visit the
Our editorial and encoding practices are documented in detail in the Praxis section of our website.
Location:
"geometry": {
"type": "Point",
"coordinates": [-0.10822249,51.51324093]
}
One of the lesser known halls or private playhouses of Renaissance London, the Whitefriars (so-called because of its location in the Whitefriars neighbourhood), was home to two different boy playing companies, each of which operated under several different names. The boy playing companies often merged and split, formed and reformed for legal and economic reasons. Run differently from the adult companies, all the boy playing companies had managers instead of shareholding actors, but the Whitefriars collective was unique even among the boy companies. Whitefriars produced many famous boy actors, some of whom later went on to greater fame in adult companies.
At the Whitefriars playhouse in
Whitefriars cost more to attend than public
amphitheatre playhouses. Higher prices excluded some potential playgoers, and
for this reason hall playhouses are sometimes known as a
disreputable venture, located in a notorious brothel district
(Bly 2); we do not know if the theatre acquired its
bad reputation because of its location, or if the location was selected because
the venture was disreputable in itself.
The Whitefriars had a discovery space, two stage exits on either side, and an above. The above could hold probably no more than three actors comfortably, and took about a minute to reach after exiting the stage (MacIntyre 9). The discovery space was much wider than the exits on either side, and could hold such large properties as a canopied bed or chairs (MacIntyre 9, 13). The tiring house could be reached through the exits and possibly the discovery space (MacIntyre 21).
After the Children of the Queen’s Revels—also called the second Whitefriars company—left in
In
The theatre company at Whitefriars was organized in a radically different way from any other Renaissance theatre company in that it operated as a collective. The structure of the playing company was not the rigid hierarchy found in many adult playing companies; rather all of the adults at Whitefriars worked together in many different areas (Bly 121). Even the boys, as they began to grow into youths, helped with some of the management and playwriting.
There are nine known writers for the Children of the King’s Revels. Only two
were professional playwrights:
The playwrights were often financially involved in the Whitefriars company.
The Children of the King’s Revels played at the Whitefriars theatre from the spring of
Boy companies often changed names and performed at different venues (including
both Whitefriars and Blackfriars). For instance, the Children of the Chapel
Royal in
The boy playing companies produced many renowned actors. As time passed, the boys began to grow older. Some stayed with their companies and took on different responsibilities, as assistant managers or playwrights, for example. Other boy players joined adult companies as they grew up.
The most notorious play of the boy playing companies is probably
satirized the influx of Scotsmen who followed the royal family southwardsin
The first Whitefriars Boys, the Children of
the King’s Revels, were known for staging comedies that pushed the envelope
of good taste. The plays were full of homoerotic puns, and attracted a
specific audience. The plays shared not only linguistic similarities, but
also similar character types, such as the bawdy virgin. These similarities
point towards collaborative playwriting on the part of the Whitefriars
collective. Capitalizing on the all-boy casts, the plays indulge in two
equally untenable suggestions: either they celebrate wanton, desirous women
or they promote laughing, homoerotic boys
(Bly 14). The patrons were often in the
neighbourhood to go to the nearby brothels. Prostitutes would have
frequented the theatres to meet clients. Early modern homosexuals (although
this word was not coined until
After the Children of the King’s Revels dissolved, the second Whitefriars Boys company, the Children of the
Queen’s Revels continued the tradition of staging sexually daring plays.
They performed plays like
without changing their grammatical gender, may denote either sex(
fascination with gender, a category of signification which, through stage conventions of crossdressing and the deployment of boy actors to play women’s parts was represented as protean and ambiguous(Comensoli and Russell 1).
ingle at home(Jonson 1.1.24): a boy kept for homosexual pleasure (
female body is by definition defective insofar as it is present at all, based on the Galenic
one-sexmodel that defines women as incomplete and imperfect men (Adelman 25). The gulls are therefore punished for their foolishness by being twinned with the imperfect bodies of women.
one of the inherent features of the theatrical occasion [, which] is a ritualistic celebration—however indirect—of the spectators themselves(Shapiro 416). That
men and daughters of Whitefriars(Jonson 24). The
menprobably refers to the playgoers ofof Whitefriars
daughters of Whitefriarsto the prostitutes who worked the audience. Jonson’s
For information about the Whitefriars Theatre, a modern map marking the site where the it once stood, and a walking tour that will take you to the site, visit the