, James
Burbage--the father of Richard Burbage, later the great actor manager
of Shakespeare's company--built the first London theater in 1576. It
was erected not far outside the northern walls of the city, and was
called simply the Theater. Not far away, a second theater, the
Curtain, was soon put up, so called not from any curtain on the stage,
but from the name of the estate on which it was built. The next
theater, the Rose, was situated in another quarter, on the Surrey side
of the Thames, where the bear-baiting rings were. This was
constructed, probably in 1587, by Philip Henslowe, a prominent
theatrical manager. Some time after 1594, a second theater, the Swan,
was put up in this same region, commonly called the Bankside. The
suitability of the Bankside as a location for theaters is still further
attested by the removal thither of the Theater in the winter of
1598-1599. The owner of the land on which the Theater had originally
been {38} built had merely leased it to Burbage--who had since
died,--and, when the lease expired, he attempted to raise the rent,
probably believing that the Burbage heirs were receiving large profits
from the building. Being unwilling to pay this increased rent, the
Burbages took down the building, and reerected it on the Bankside, this
time calling it the Globe. The last to be built of the great public
theaters was the Fortune, which Henslowe erected in 1600. The
situation of the Fortune outside Cripplegate, although a considerable
distance west of the Curtain, was, roughly, that of the earlier
theaters, the northern suburbs of the city.

This list does not include all the theaters built or altered between
1576 and 1600, nor did such building stop at the latter date,--the
Globe, for instance, was burnt and again rebuilt in 1613,--but the
sketch is complete enough for our purposes. By the end of 1600 all the
more important public theaters were open, and after that date, so far
as we know, no important changes in construction were made. The next
real step--which was to do away altogether with this type of
theater--did not come until after the Restoration.

+The Buildings+.--Before describing the buildings themselves, it is
necessary to make one qualification. It is impossible to speak of the
'Elizabethan theaters' or of the 'Elizabethan stage' as if there were
one type to which all theaters and stages conformed. The Fortune was
undoubtedly a great improvement over the Theate