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I just finished The Great Courses course The History of London and they spend quite a bit of time talking about theatre in London and it was pretty much banned/
by oldlondonta 6y ago
I just finished The Great Courses course The History of London and they spend quite a bit of time talking about theatre in London and it was pretty much banned/heavily controlled for most of London's history. As a result London just didn't have purpose built theatres very early compared to a lot of other cities.
- dang 6y agoThat's fascinating. I assume it was banned/controlled for religious reasons? But then the religion doesn't fork until 1534 (Church of England), so why would it have been banned earlier, and why the difference with other countries?
- oldlondonta 6y agoI relistened to snippets from the course and I think my previous comment about banning for most of history was wrong though the title still right. I was thinking of the formation of the Kings Company and Dukes Company but they were after not before this. From what I've gathered from relistening to snippets from the course and a bit of Googling the actual answer is lack of demand. London was abandoned for hundreds of years after the Romans left, then there wasn't a big interest in the arts for a long time because of other priorities like being regularly sacked/plagues/etc. I do know theatres were still kept out of the city proper once they started popping up but I can't find why other than again fear of plague.
- efreak 6y agoSee this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23499672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23499672
- rozab 6y agoI was thinking that there must have been a Roman theatre in Londinium, but apparently not. There were known theatres in St Albans and Colchester though