The Staging of Plays at the Salisbury Court Theatre, 1630-1642

Abstract

The Salisbury Court Theatre was the last London playhouse to be built before all theatres were closed by the Puritans in 1642. Although we know that the theatre was converted from a barn standing on a piece of property measuring 140 feet by 42 feet at a cost of ?1200,1 and we can now locate the property with some precision,2 there are no extant illustrations or descriptions of the interior of the Salisbury Court, as there are for its contemporary, the Cockpit-in-Court. As Oscar Brownstein points out, this playhouse may have represented the culmination of all previous private theatre experience, or it may have marked a major change in form or size from the other private theatres. Though . . . these suggestions are interesting, says Brownstein, they must remain insubstantial speculations until some better grasp of the physical features of the theatre can be found.3 While Glynne Wickham speculates that the Inigo Jones drawings held at Worcester College (Nos. 7B and 7C) might represent the Salisbury Court,4 there is no substantiation for this claim. In a recent article John Orrell suggests that this drawing represents the Phoenix, or Cockpit, in Drury Lane.5 While no firm conclusions can be drawn, it is far from certain that these drawings represent the Salisbury Court Theatre. The title of Edward A. Langhan's brief article in Theatre Notebook, A Picture of the Salisbury Court Theatre,6 seems hopeful but proves misleading, since Langhan speculates that the Lea and Glynne 1706 map of London contains by mistake a picture of a theatre known to have burned down some forty years earlier. In the absence of any acceptable illustrations or detailed descriptions of the interior of the theatre, the plays that were