Copyright held by
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Further details of licences are available from our
Licences page. For more
information, contact the project director,
Provider: University of Victoria
Database: The Map of Early Modern London
Content: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
TY - ELEC
A1 - Price, Eoin
ED - Jenstad, Janelle
T1 - The Cockpit
T2 - The Map of Early Modern London
ET - 7.0
PY - 2022
DA - 2022/05/05
CY - Victoria
PB - University of Victoria
LA - English
UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/COCK5.htm
UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/xml/standalone/COCK5.xml
ER -
St. Giles in the Fields was a hospital and parish church. It is marked near the western edge of the Agas map with the label S. Gyles in the Fyeld
. According to
The city of London, not to be confused with the allegorical character (
Temple Bar was one of the principle entrances to the city of London, dividing the Strand to the west and Fleet Street to the east. It was an ancient right of way and toll gate. Walter Thornbury dates the wooden gate structure shown in the Agas Map to the early Tudor period, and describes a number of historical pageants that processed through it, including the funeral procession of
Cockpit Alley, later called Pitt Court, was one of a series of narrow alleys that ran southwest to northeast between Drury Lane in the west and Great Wild Street (now just Wild Street) in the east. It took its name from the Cockpit Theatre which was located in the alley or very nearby. It is not labelled in the Agas Map, but appears clearly on the Rocque map of 1746.
Whitehall Palace, the Palace of Whitehall or simply Whitehall, was one of the most complex and sizeable locations in the entirety of early modern Europe. As the primary place of residence for monarchs from [i]t lay on the left bank of the Thames, and extended from nearly the point where Westminster Bdge. now crosses the river to Scotland Yard, and from the river back to St. James’s Park
(Sugden 564-565).
The four principal constituents of the Inns of Court were:
The history of the two Blackfriars theatres is long and fraught with legal and political struggles. The story begins in
The Globe was the open-air, public theatre in which
Lincoln’s Inn was one of the four Inns of Court.
For information about the Red Bull, a modern map marking the site where the it once stood, and a walking tour that will take you to the site, visit the
The Cockpit-in-Court, or The Cockpit-at-Court, was a private Caroline playhouse for members of the royal household, and was located within Whitehall Palace. Its name arose from the fact that it was formerly a cockfighting site at court. It should not be confused with The Cockpit Theatre, which was located near Drury Lane.
In
Salisbury Court Theatre was a private indoor theatre owned by Richard Gunnell and William Blagrove.
According to Weinreb, the theatre was built in
According to Weinreb, Hibbert, Keay, and Keay, the Fortune was built for
Built in
Somerset House (labelled as Somerſet Palace
on the Agas map) was a significant site for royalty in early modern London. Erected in
Gray’s Inn was one of the four Inns of Court.
The Swan was the second of the Bankside theatres. It was located at Paris Garden. It was in use from
The Cockpit, also known as the Phoenix, was an indoor commercial playhouse planned and built by the theatre entrepreneur and actor in Drury Lane
, but G. E. Bentley offers a more precise description:
(Bentley vi 49). Herbert Berry adds that the playhouse was three-eights of a mile west of the western boundary of the City of London at Temple Bar
(Berry 624), and Frances Teague notes that it was on the east side of Drury Lane
and that [t]he site was long preserved by the name of Cockpit Alley, afterwards Pitt Court
(Teague 243).
The Julian calendar, in use in the British Empire until September 1752. This calendar is used for dates where the date of the beginning of the year is ambigious.
The Julian calendar with the calendar year regularized to beginning on 1 January.
The Julian calendar with the calendar year beginning on 25 March. This was the calendar used in the British Empire until September 1752.
The Gregorian calendar, used in the British Empire from September 1752. Sometimes
referred to as
The Anno Mundi (year of the world
) calendar is based on the supposed date of the
creation of the world, which is calculated from Biblical sources. At least two different
creation dates are in common use. See Anno Mundi (Wikipedia).
Regnal dates are given as the number of years into the reign of a particular monarch.
Our practice is to tag such dates with
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.
Research Assistant, 2012-2014. MoEML Research Affiliate. Sarah Milligan completed her MA at the University of Victoria in 2012 on the invalid persona in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s
Director of Pedagogy and Outreach, 2015–2020. Associate Project Director, 2015. 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
Eoin Price is the tutor in renaissance literature at Swansea University and teaching associate at The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham. His book,
Publicand
PrivatePlayhouse Performance
Mark Bayer is an associate professor and chair of the Department of English at the
University of Texas at San Antonio. He is the author of
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.
Playwright.
Sheriff of London
Playwright.
King of England, Scotland, and Ireland
Playwright, translator, and poet.
Playwright, printer, and pamphleteer.
Playwright, poet, and author.
Queen consort of England, Scotland, and Ireland
Master of the Revels.
Playwright and poet.
Bohemian etcher. Moved to London in
King of Scotland
Architect and theatre designer.
Poet and playwright.
Playwright and poet.
Playwright. Buried at St. Saviour (Southwark).
Playwright.
Courtier, secret agent, and Abbot of St. Martin’s. Author of
Naval officer and diarist. Husband of
Playwright and translator.
Playwright and poet.
Playwright and poet.
Antiquary and author.
Actor and theatre entrepreneur. Founder of the
Actor and theatre manager. Son of
Member of the
Poet.
Playwright.
Playwright. Buried at St. Saviour (Southwark).
Playwright.
Playwright. Husband of
Bricklayer. Helped build the Cockpit.
Playwright and poet.
Playwright.
Playwright.
Poet and lawyer. Brother of
Playwright and poet.
Poet and playwright.
Playwright and theatre manager.
Playwright.
Queen consort of Scotland
The
Most MoEML documents, or significant fragments with mol:
prefix and accessed through the web application
with their id + .xml
.
The molagas prefix points to the shape representation of a location on MoEML’s OpenLayers3-based rendering of the Agas Map.
Links to page-images in the Chadwyck-Healey
Links to page-images in the
The mdt (MoEML Document Type) prefix used on
The mdtlist (MoEML Document Type listing) prefix used in linking attributes points to a listings page constructed from a category in the central MDT taxonomy in the includes file. There are two variants, one with the plain _subcategories
, meaning all subcategories of the category.
The molgls (MoEML gloss) prefix used on
This molvariant prefix is used on
This molajax prefix is used on
The molstow prefix is used on
The molshows prefix is used on
The sb prefix is used on
Our editorial and encoding practices are documented in detail in the Praxis section of our website.
The Cockpit, also known as the Phoenix, was an indoor commercial playhouse planned and built by the theatre entrepreneur and actor in Drury Lane
, but G. E. Bentley offers a more precise description:
(Bentley vi 49). Herbert Berry adds that the playhouse was three-eights of a mile west of the western boundary of the City of London at Temple Bar
(Berry 624), and Frances Teague notes that it was on the east side of Drury Lane
and that [t]he site was long preserved by the name of Cockpit Alley, afterwards Pitt Court
(Teague 243). Bentley notes that the playhouse was nearer to Whitehall and St. James’s Palace than any other London playhouse, and was within walking distance of the Inns of Court (vi 49). He also observes that, like the Blackfriars and the Globe, the Cockpit was not far from brothels. Indoor playhouses, which were more expensive than their suburban amphitheatre equivalents, apparently benefited from the patronage of many lawyers, making the location suitable for the Cockpit. However, the Inns of Court initially provided an obstacle for
In made a tenement
rather than making an addition to his owne dwelling howse
(Bentley ii 365-6). Despite this, and despite the aforementioned objections of Lincoln’s Inn benchers, the Cockpit was opened in
There are few facts available to reveal what the playhouse may have looked like at any stage of its development, but there are a number of illustrations that some scholars have conjectured are representations of the Cockpit. One such illustration is taken from the Great Map (c.[t]he building is in the right place, and the buildings and grounds around it match those mentioned in a series of deeds and in a lawsuit of 1647 partly about the playhouse
(624). If Berry is correct that the map depicts the Phoenix, then it seems that the theatre was a square building with three pitched roofs. Other illustrations have come under sustained scrutiny. John Orrell suggested that drawings now housed at Worcester College, Oxford, represent plans for Beeston’s theatre, attributing the designs to the drawings, splendid as they are, probably tell us nothing about the appearance of the Phoenix
(244).
Initially, the
The Cockpit suffered a considerable setback shortly after opening. On Shrove Tuesday,
The transfer of the Red Bull repertory to the more expensive Cockpit playhouse raises important questions about theatrical tastes. The Red Bull had a reputation for drama that attended to citizen concerns and made extensive use of elaborate special effects. Sometimes these plays and the playhouse audience were denigrated as unsophisticated. The Cockpit proprietors, by contrast, were keen to establish their playhouse as urbane and elite. Collins suggests that the transfer of bombastic plays such as
ignorant asses(sig. A2r). The play was later revived at the Phoenix to a seemingly more appreciative and sophisticated audience. Similarly,
priuy marke of Ironie(Beaumont sig. A2r). In the 1630s, however, it was revived, apparently successfully, at the Phoenix, which is perhaps an indication of this playhouse’s attempt to configure itself as sophisticated and elite, while distancing itself from the Red Bull.
It would be a mistake, however, to push this argument too far. Although the Red Bull and the Cockpit were rival venues and did not operate in partnership like the Blackfriars and Globe playhouses after 1609 when the
These performances were part of a wider project of Elizabethan revival. Martin Butler observes that the Phoenix kept a high proportion of old plays in its repertoire in the 1630s
(183). Indeed, the drama of Caroline England was broadly nostalgic in nature, often alluding to, or drawing upon, the established classics of the earlier theatre.
The Phoenix enjoyed particular success when
The Phoenix, then, developed a prestigious reputation and became the principal rival of the Blackfriars. Indeed, in the 1630s, the Phoenix appeared on title pages even more frequently than the Blackfriars did. The growing status of the Phoenix apparently motivated its rivals to express criticism. The fact that the playhouse shared plays, players, and playwrights with the Red Bull gave ammunition to its critics. Thus, the Cockpit was regularly denigrated as an unsophisticated theatre with a plebeian clientele. In the early 1630s,
adulterate stage(sig. A4v) of the Cockpit and the Red Bull.
Even during the years of theatre closure, the Phoenix was, illicitly, in use. Indeed, the playhouse was raided and damaged by the authorities on more than one occasion in an attempt to stop illegal performances (Gurr and Orrell 146). In a text printed in
The Moore of Venice),
See also the description of the Cockpit/Phoenix and interactive walking map at