The Curtain was the longest-lasting playhouse of Elizabethan London. Its theatrical life ran from c. 1576 into the 1620s. It was home for some time in the 1590s to the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (including the actor and playwright William Shakespeare, a number of whose plays likely “premiered” here). Alongside the nearby Theatre, it often stood in for “playhouse” generally in commentary of the period: one might spend time, in Tudor parlance, visiting “the Theatres and Curtains.”
The “Curtain” referred not to a stage curtain but to a parcel or “close” of land formerly owned by Holywell Priory. It was bordered on its west by Curtain Road, its north by Holywell Lane, its east by Shoreditch High Street/Norton Folgate, and its south by what was then Hog Lane and is now Worship Street. The area sits just a little north of the city of London, reachable via a brief stroll through Moorfields or out of Bishopsgate. Its central and eastern area was dominated by a slightly boggy field. Upon the dissolution of the monasteries, the area was parcelled up into a series of subleases into urban agricultural plots and commercial buildings and businesses, such as a victualling house.
In the 1570s, a playhouse added to these commercial establishments and took the area’s name. It sat close to another playhouse, The Theatre, situated just over Holywell Lane in the northern part of the former Holywell Priory, and the two enterprises would develop an important collaboration. The small span of the “Curtain” did not have a huge population, but it was home to a diverse array of residents and workers. The playwright Thomas Middleton, “our other Shakespeare,” grew up around Curtain close (much of which was owned by his father, an enterprising bricklayer). Thomas dropped out of the University of Oxford to help his mother with legal troubles concerning the district, where he began “daily accompanying the players.”
By 1616, our “anchor” date, the Curtain district was more urbanised and built up than thirty years previous. The playhouse had also been recently renovated or reedified. Houses and establishments such as the King’s Head inn or the Sugar Loaf yard could be found along its perimeter. Shoreditch and the parish of St Leonard’s (in which the Curtain sat) was home to a cosmopolitan crowd: huguenot silkweavers, Italian schoolteachers, a number of performers and theatre proprietors, and a growing Black community to its south.
Our Curtain district accordingly takes into account a slightly wider area than the strictly defined “Curtain close” and its field. It stretches into Moorfields, so crucial to movement around the area, and up towards New Inn Yard, once home to the Theatre, which had a crucial business arrangement with the Curtain playhouse and likewise sat on the former priory’s land. Our district reflects how a playhouse’s boundaries extend beyond their legal or geographical surrounds but nonetheless keep close proximity to its theatrical centre. This slightly wider layer of Curtain expanse takes in the individuals, businesses, relationships, and journeys that were so key to the playhouse and its communities but keeps focus on the playhouses as the most defining institutions of this discrete and widely-known plot.
There are no detailed maps or surveys for the area near to our anchor date of 1616. In turn, our knowledge of the district relies on a range of lawsuits (largely pertaining to the Curtain and Theatre–so crucial to much of our understanding of the early modern London theatre industry) as well as key land leases and indentures, parish records, and related documentary sources. The playhouse was re-discovered in 2016–the most extensive early modern playhouse remains yet uncovered–and excavated by MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology), giving fresh archaeological insight into its architecture, development, and surrounding contexts. The preserved stage will soon be open to the public as the Museum of Shakespeare.
