Christopher Highley. Blackfriars in Early Modern London: Theater, Church, and Neighborhood

Abstract

Blackfriars in Early Modern London opens with a quotation from Donald Lupton’s 1632 pamphlet, London and the Country Carbonadoed and Quartered into Several Characters, in which Lupton comments on the rapid growth of England’s capital city: ‘She is grown so Great, I am almost affraide to meddle with Her; She’s certainly a great World, there are so many little worlds in Her’ (p. 1). The ‘little world’ of the Blackfriars precinct, close to the western walls of the City of London, is the focus of Christopher Highley’s richly rewarding study. Formerly dominated by the religious house established by Dominican friars in the thirteenth century, by the late sixteenth century, the Blackfriars was both an Anglican parish centring on the church of St Anne and a liberty, outside the direct control of the City. It is best known to literary scholars as the site of two playhouses. The first Blackfriars playhouse was established by the choirmaster Richard Farrant, who leased a set of rooms including the former refectory from the local magnate, Sir William More, in 1576, and the second by the theatre investor and former actor, James Burbage, who purchased the friary’s old parliament hall and adjoining rooms from More in 1596.