Abstract
There is little surviving evidence to establish precisely the location, dimensions, and features of the room within the cathedral precinct in which the Children of Paul’s gave their performances. This essay surveys the existing data about this venue and examines the text of the surviving plays in the repertory of the Children of Paul’s—by dramatists such as John Lyly, John Marston, Thomas Dekker, John Webster, George Chapman, and Thomas Middleton—to visualise the room’s spatial features from the stage directions and other verbal and dramaturgical clues extant in the printed playtexts. This chapter argues that the stage of the ‘playhouse’ adjoining St Paul’s may have been about as large as that of the Blackfriars, and would have afforded the Children of Paul’s every means to rival with their competitors in theatrical accomplishment.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the editors and reviewers of this volume for their helpful feedback, and Shanyn Altman, in particular, for her patience and encouragement. Richard Dutton, David Carnegie, and David Lindley kindly read a draft of this chapter and provided useful and intellectually challenging comments, for which I am enormously grateful. David Carnegie also shared with me his paper for the 2020 meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America, ‘Conditions of Performance for Paul’s Boys (1599‒1606) in St Paul’s Cathedral Almonry’. Finally, Roze Hentschell kindly sent me the final draft of her chapter on the Children of Paul’s while her 2020 book was being typeset.
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Pérez Díez, J.A. (2021). The ‘Playhouse’ at St Paul’s: What We Know of the Theatre in the Almonry. In: Altman, S., Buckner, J. (eds) Old St Paul’s and Culture. Early Modern Literature in History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77267-3_9
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