Earl of Warwick’s Company of actors converted a building for performances at the well-to-do suburb of Newington Butts to the south of London, sometime before 1576. It was known as the Playhouse, from the medieval word ‘pleghows’. It finally closed in 1596.

As the popularity of plays grew during the Elizabethan era restrictions on actors and the content of plays were tightened. An Act of Parliament of 1572 classed all kinds of performers (including buskers, jugglers, fortune tellers and so on) in the same category as vagabonds unless in possession of a begging licence or “belonging to any baron of this land…”. In fact, in those times everyone needed some status in law, such as a freeman belonging to a Livery Company, an employee of a freeman or governmentattitude of the City of London authorities became increasingly puritanical, believing performances attracted “vagrant persons” and “masterless men” and that actors were “a very superfluous sort of men”. They distracted young men from their apprenticeships and, as plays were mostly watched on Sundays, it was also felt they were keeping people away from their attendance at church. The Merchant Taylors, who had been performing plays in their hall, ceased to do so in 1573. The following year the City authorities introduced a system of control and censorship and any inn holding performances was required to hold a licence and donate certain sums of money to hospitals within the City. Each play was obliged to be first performed before the mayor and aldermen prior to its public performance to