The short life of South London's first purpose-built theatre

The first purpose-built theatre south of the Thames was located on a main road running south from London to Portsmouth and through historic Surrey.

Although today it lies under the notoriously busy Elephant and Castle road junction, at the time it appeared to prove too off the beaten track for London’s leading actors.

Newington Butts playhouse stood for a couple of decades on the east side of the high street of Newington on a property known as Lurklane, approximately 1 mile from Bankside in the capital. (The site now lies under the busy Elephant & Castle junction where New Kent Road and Newington Causeway meet and for obvious reasons has not been excavated.)

Around 1576, Jerome Savage, a player with the Earl of Warwick's men, was granted a sublease on the property (originally part of the manor of Walworth belonging to the Archbishop of Canterbury) where he converted the tenement as a playhouse. Little is known about the playhouse itself or for that matter, which companies performed there in the 1570s and ‘80s.

However, in or around 1590, one of the top performing groups, the Lord Strange's Men were ordered to play for 3 days at Newington Butts while performance at the Rose Theatre in Southwark was prohibited (for unknown reasons). They complained at the time about ‘the tediousnes of the waie’ for playgoers – this was undoubtedly one of the reasons why Newington Butts ceased to function as a competitive theatre by the 1590s.

More interesting is a note of playhouse receipts made in June 1594, when the Lord Admiral's Men played there for 10 days, joining up – or alternating with - the newly formed Lord Chamberlain's Men because other, better-positioned, playhouses were apparently closed.

Thanks to the unique manuscript known as ‘Henslowe’s Diary’, we even know the 7 plays mounted during this brief period before the Admiral’s Men returned to the Rose Theatre and Chamberlain’s (Shakespeare’s) moved north of the river to Richard Burbage’s Theatre (the Globe was not built until 1599).

What’s notable in the theatre manager Philip Henslowe’s list of receipts from the performances between 3 and 13 June, 1594, are two of Shakespeare’s plays including Titus Andronicus (performed twice for a fee of 12 and 7 shillings respectively) and Taming of the Shrew (9 shillings). The plays were to become part of the repertory of Chamberlain’s Men, but another popular play also mounted at the time, Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, remained with the Admiral’s Men and their star player, Edward Alleyn.

Although we have no actual record that Shakespeare himself was a member of Chamberlain’s Men when the company was first formed in late spring 1594, it is very likely that he was indeed one of their actors, as well as a contributing playwright, possibly recruited from the remnants of Pembroke’s Men, a company known to have hit hard times the previous year.

We do find Shakespeare’s name listed as one of the primary recipients (with Will Kemp and Richard Burbage) of payment at court for the Chamberlain’s Men performance of 2 comedies on 26 and 28 December later the same year.

These performances managed by Henslowe in June while his Rose playhouse was temporarily closed may have been the last at Newington Butts. When Paul Buck was granted the lease of the property in early July the same year, it was on condition that he convert the playhouse to some other use and not to allow any plays there after Michaelmas 1594.