The Blackfriars Theatre/Blackfriars Theatre and Shakespeare

The Blackfriars Theatre was set up to retrieve the idea of the private theatre in London. It was the brainchild of James Burbage. It was hoped that it would not be worsened by the climate and that it would attract a small audience paying good prices. Unlike the public theatre, it was to be acted in open air. This kind of private theatre was not to rely upon a larger audience paying their puny fares. Burbage acquired the dining hall at Blackfriars Monastery and changed it into a playhouse. Needless to mention, the area where the theatre was set up was a fashionable residential one. Moreover, the people who lived there raised objection in fear that the area would be turned into a bear garden of noise and hullabaloo and that it would spoil the peace of the neighbourhood. The residents appealed to the Privy Council to decree that the building could not be used for performing the plays. The venture was halted for the time being, but the performance began later. Each public theatre in the then times was outside the limits of the city, except the Blackfriars. Though in the city, it was free from the jurisdiction of the City Fathers. It had been a monastery and its five acres were a ‘liberty’ or exempted. The Swan, the Rose and the Globe were all on the riverbanks. The lease for The Theatre got expired. The Burbages, Shakespeare, Heminges, Condell, Kempe and others of the Lord Chamberlain’s Company carried the timber across the Thames to dismantle it. James Burbage bought the buildings for £ 600 from Thomas More and changed them into a theatre hall. It is not sure how this conversion was made. However, C. W. Wallace asserts that there was a hall 66'×46' with a stage, galleries and seats. Richard Burbage inherited the property from James, his father. Evans and Giles took it on lease from Richard for performances by the children of the Chapel. Anyway, these children once posed as the most serious rivals of the performing adults.