Conclusion: The wind and the rain: the wider landscape of early modern performance

Abstract

In thinking about the visual culture of the early modern period, we have grown accustomed to reproducing the panoramas of London created in the seventeenth century by the likes of Wenceslaus Hollar or the anonymous examples produced by Dutch publisher Claes Jansz Visscher and the impressive sense they give of an emergent capital city, with all its complications, juxtapositions and possibilities. It is worth, however, looking at such vistas with fresh eyes in the light of the discussions that have gone before in this volume and noting again the significant presence of the purpose-built theatres of the Bankside. We have already seen how their neighbourhood and waterside geography was crucial to the development of early modern commercial theatre: the status of the Clink prison precinct and Paris Garden as liberties, the neighbourhood of Southwark itself with its tanners and weavers, the proximity of the river and access to the City proper just across the water and the necessary audiences that helped to provide. We have also turned at regular intervals to the increasing importance of the indoor playhouses to the story of that development, and the panoramas also help us to register the shift of emphasis towards their locations on the north side of the Thames as the children's companies’ success blossomed and almost as quickly yielded their power and their venues to the dominant adult companies such as the King's Men.