Yet More Playhouses!

I'm just continuing down this here rabbit hole and I'm okay with this! I might come up for air but I'll probably just end up looping back to poke more at the London Masters of Defense and then prep for a class about them. So that's cool!

So, prize-fights and the venues.

Prior to 1570, there was a fair variety of places where prize-fights occurred. The most common was the open-air market of Leadenhall, but there were other outdoor settings as well. After 1570 however, prize-fights almost entirely shifted to inn-yard theaters and public playhouses. The two most commonly used inns were the Bull and the Bell Savage, with the Curtain and the Theater as the two most popular playhouses.

I mentioned in my last post that I pulled out some stage sizes for two playhouses in London - the Fortune and the Globe. Ironically, according to O.L. Brownstein in his article A Record of London Inn-Playhouses from c. 1565-1590, "there are contemporary references to fencing shows in all the public theaters except the Globe and the Fortune." Both of those were buildings that were built specifically as playhouses though, and never adapted from anything else. What about the other venue that we've seen discussed in reference to prize-fights: the inn-yard theatre?

An inn-yard theatre is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. A raised stage would be temporarily built in the courtyard of an inn, and plays would be performed there. The audience would be charged for an entry, and a multi-story inn could also effectively have raised viewing galleries due to the rooms and balconies along the sides of the courtyard.

While the Sloane Ms. 2530 has a number of inns listed as prize-fight venues, in his study and transcription of the manuscript, "The Noble Science," Herbert Berry notes that the Ms. 2530 was neither the official register of the company nor a complete accounting of the company's activities. We know from other documents of the time, such as letters to the Aldermen of the City of London asking for permission to hold a prize-fight with all the attendant pomp, that other sites were used that were not noted in Ms. 2530. Although I have not yet found proof that any prizes were fought at the Boar's Head, it seems to me to be a good enough example of an inn-yard which was converted over time to a true play-house. That said, I did note that in "The Boar's Head Playhouse" (Folger Books, 1986) Berry speculates that the stage built in 1598 - 3'6" high, and it specifically had a railing to prevent the audience from trying to climb up - could have been placed in the middle of the yard with the hope of enticing prize-fights to happen there.

So let's talk about what the stage and the inn-yard looked like at various points in its development! (All of this data is from "The Boar's Head Playhouse," by the way.) In its original form, the full size of the open yard was 55'7" x 54'6", and the first free-standing stage in the middle of this was 25'x39'7". 

To this point, I recently grabbed a tape measure, some cones, and a Lupold, and we laid out a rectangle the size of that initial stage. Then we took up a pair of spears - being the most sizeable weapons we'd expect to use in any of rapier, C&T, or A&S projects - and proceeded to play around in the list we'd set up. I am here to tell you that it was luxurious. Even when we were testing it on all angles while moving around one another, we never really felt as though we were in imminent danger of stepping outside the boundaries of the stage being used. (Or what would have happened in period, falling off of the stage.) I imagine that if the fighters were fighting across the shortest dimension with larger weapons that they'd be very aware of the edge, but as long as your fight didn't consist solely of backpedaling, you'd probably be fine.

From there, when the stage was moved to be permanently up against one of the buildings bordering the inn-yard which had been converted to a tiring-house, they kept the same basic dimensions for it. Notably, despite expanding the galleries available for the audience, there is no evidence of the stage height increasing; presumably the owners wanted to be able to fill the floor of the yard to the brim and have it visible from anywhere. The only other meaningful change to the stage would have been that it was accessible directly from the tiring-house, without steps or ramps or clambering up a three and a half foot step.

There we are! A reasonable example of a free-standing temporarily erected stage in an inn-yard, which could well have been used in prize-fights!

I think there'll be one more post wrapping up the London Masters of Defense rabbit hole, and then I'll try to roll it all together into a single short class for the kicks of it.