ensure it contained nothing that was lewd, seditious or likely to cause a riot. By the end of the century playhouses were banned completely within the City.

Many of the ‘liberties’ enjoyed by former ecclesiastic institutions and estates, under which they were outside of the control of the City authorities, still remained in place long after the dissolution of the monasteries. One such area was the land of the former priory of Holywell at Shoreditch, a hamlet of humble cottages in the latter 16th century.

James Burbage’s company had been performing at the Bull Tavern, within the City on Bishopsgate but needed to look elsewhere for a venue. His brother-in-law, John Brayne, a wealthy member of the Grocers’ Company, had in 1567 built a performance venue for strolling players atthe Red Lion at Whitechapel but it only functioned for a year. In 1576, together with Burbage, he erected the Theatre (from the Greek, and later Latin theatrum) at Holywell, England’s first purpose-built playhouse since Roman times. It was of timber-framed construction on a masonry plinth. Designed in a circular or octagonal fashion inspired by the inns in which plays were being performed, it established the shape of playhouses for the following fifty years or more. The Theatre probably held between six to eight hundred people in the audience, with many standing in the open central pit around which were more expensive banked seating areas. Burbage also had an interest in another London theatre, based in the former refectory of the Blackfriars monastery and leased out for use