You can still see ancient Greek dramas performed today, in the theatre at Epidaurus, which can seat 20,000 spectators. Its acoustics are so good that people sitting in the top row can hear a coin dropped far below in the orchestra (circular dancing floor) - a trick regularly performed by tour guides.

See the theatre of Epidaurus here

Roman Theatres

The Romans copied Greek drama, and developed their own style of theatre building, which they called a "theatrum", after the Greeks. Much smaller than Greek theatres, these were free-standing buildings, with the seating set against retaining walls rather than hilsides. It was the Romans who built the first theatres in England. The only surviving example, at St Albans (Roman Verulamium), had space for 2,000 spectators. With its circular shape and raised stage decorated with classical columns, it had much in common with Shakespeare's Globe, though this is probably a coincidence.

See the website of the St Albans theatre here

Medieval drama

Following the fall of the Roman Empire, theatre was forgotten about in Europe for centuries. Then, during the Middle Ages, the Church created a new kind of drama for its great festivals, at Easter and Christmas. During services, priests and members of the choir would re-enact the events of Christ's life, exchanging lines of Latin dialogue. The next development was to perform religious plays on small stages outside the church building.
 

The 14th and 15th centuries saw the development of the Mystery or Miracle play, where members of craft and trade guilds staged Biblical dramas on elaborately decorated pageant carts. It was common for a guild to select a subject related to its own work. So the shipwrights would perform the story of Noah's Ark, while the butchers staged the crucifixion.

Other types of religious play also developed, such as the Morality play, in which a character called Everyman, standing for all humanity, was shown on his journey through life towards salvation. These religious plays fell out of favour in the 16th century, as a result of the English Reformation - the break with the Catholic Church. Mystery and Morality plays seemed too Catholic in style, and Protestants felt that it was blasphemous to portray God and Christ on stage.

Strolling players

In the 16th century, companies of professional players (actors) travelled around the country, performing plays in the halls of great houses, and on portable stages set up in inn-yards or market-places. To be successful, companies needed the patronage, or protection, of a powerful noble. Without such protection, they were liable to be arrested as wandering beggars, whipped out of town, and burned through the ears with a hot iron.

The greatest enemies of the players in London were the city authorities, the Lord Mayor and his aldermen. They saw any large public gathering as a threat to law and order, and most of them were strict Puritans, who disapproved of all forms of entertainment as sinful. They did everything they could to make life difficult for the players.

Burbage's Theatre

To escape the interference of the city authorities, in 1576, James Burbage, chief player of the Earl of Leicester's Men, decided to build a permanent ''playhouse'' in Shoreditch, outside the city's jurisdiction. Burbage's playhouse was a tall polygonal wooden structure - a design based on buildings already used for bear and bull baiting and cock fighting. To show that drama was an ancient and respected art form, he named his playhouse the Theatre, from the Roman "theatrum''. Before Burbage, the word had only been used in English as the title of a book of maps.

Burbage's Theatre was a great financial success. Because it was a permanent building, audiences now knew where to go when they wanted to see a play. With its yard, for standing, and three galleries for seating, the playhouse could hold much bigger audiences than an inn. The public could also be charged a fee before they entered the building, a more reliable way of getting their money than passing a hat around in a marketplace or inn.

Within a short time, three other playhouses, modelled on the Theatre, had been built in London's suburbs. These were the Curtain (1577), at Shoreditch, and the Rose (1587) and Swan (1595) at Southwark, south of the River Thames. The playhouses were soon famous tourist attractions, pointed out to visitors to London. In 1596, soon after the Swan opened, a Dutch visitor, Johannes de Witt, sketched and described the building:

"Of all the theatres... the largest and most impressive is that one of which the sign is the swan... for it accommodates in its seats three thousand persons, and is built of a mass of flint stones... and supported by wooden columns painted in such excellent imitation of marble that it is able to deceive even the most cunning."