Companies had been performing indoors during the winter months already, of course. Everything from impressive halls such as Middle Temple to the more rough and tumble halls in the larger City inns had been temporarily pressed into service as performing areas. Burbage’s idea was to create a year-round playing space for his adult company. He set about converting part of an old Dominican friary in Blackfriars, a room which had witnessed the Vatican’s enquiry into Henry VIII’s divorce, for the purpose.

 
Almost as soon as it was ready in November 1596, the Privy Council received complaints about the possible disruption to residents and the players were banned. Boy companies took over the space, and as they were considered more genteel and only performed once a week, they were allowed to stay. It was not until 1608 that Shakespeare’s company, now the King’s Men, came back to the Blackfriars.

 
This playing space was very different to the outdoor amphitheatres such as the Globe. The room was rectangular, about 20m x 14m, with the stage at the narrower end, and only accommodated about 500 people. This made the atmosphere much more intimate. It would undoubtedly have required a different performing style from the actors, but history does not record what they made of the transition! It is important to note that the same repertoire was playing in both indoor and outdoor theatres, although some plays were inspired by particular playing conditions.

 

Music by candlelight

The intimacy of the auditorium lent itself to greater use of music. Musicians played from an hour before the play began and became a much more important part of the plays. Ariel’s songs in The Tempest and the “sounds and sweet airs” of the island, as well as the magical revelation at the end of The Winter’s Tale, “music awake her”, were conceived by a playwright exploiting the new possibilities of indoor playing.

 
The lack of daylight meant that illumination was provided by candles hung above the stage and in the auditorium. Slight pauses had to be introduced between the acts so that they could be trimmed. The soft quality of candle light compared to the harsh light of day may have had an effect on the mood of plays themselves and the audience who watched them. The “soft focus” effect would also have been created by all those tobacco smokers puffing away with nowhere for the smoke to escape to. The audiences swapped the smells of the working men and their garlicky breath for the stench of tobacco.

 
A greater degree of scenic spectacle was also possible at the Blackfriars than at the Globe. The wedding masque in The Tempest, for example, demands a sumptuous display in the text, and such things could be contrived more easily in the controlled conditions of indoor playing. It is interesting to consider how far the architecture of the theatres affects the kind of plays that are written for them. After centuries of writing for indoor spaces, what will living playwrights make of the opportunity to write for the new Globe which Dominic Dromgoole is offering?

 

Take your seats…

Back at the Blackfriars, the audience were all seated, as opposed to a rabble of groundlings milling around in the pit, and had paid a great deal more for their entry fee. For example, a box beside the stage at the Blackfriars cost five times the top price at the Globe. This encouraged greater attention to the plays and a more genteel class of audience. The pricing structure was also in reverse. At the Globe the cheapest places were those closest to stage, jammed up against it, in fact. In the Blackfriars, the less you paid the further away from the stage you were. The Blackfriars was more like today’s box office charges: the best seats are in the stalls near the front of the stage and the worst are up high, away in the gods.

 
Most radical, however, was the provision of stools actually on the stage itself, reserved for particularly wealthy and self-publicising audience members. They were notorious for upstaging the action of the play with late arrivals, fussy flinging of cloaks over their shoulders, greeting of friends and interjecting criticism of the play. This practice would have been impossible at the Globe because of the effect on sightlines, the greater height of the stage and the proximity to the hissing and mewing of the groundlings. The opportunity for social display at the indoor playhouses was much greater and helped to raise the status of theatre-going.

 
The success of the Blackfriars Theatre started a trend which gradually led away from the open-air amphitheatres such as the Globe until indoor playing became the norm. By looking at the differences between indoor and outdoor playing, you can begin to see the extent to which a theatre building affects the whole culture of theatre-going and theatre-making.