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__THEATRE ARCHITECTURE FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE 21 CENTURY__
AMPHITHEATRES, JEUX-DE-PAUME, AND CORRALES
Introduction1
Public places of performance in the late sixteenth
and early seventeenth century in London, Madrid,
and Paris were “found spaces”2 adapted from older
structures which had different architectural
meanings, and they established dissimilar
possibilities in the relationship between the stage
and the audience in the Golden Age. This essay aims
to discuss the basic differences and similarities
between types of public playhouses in the
aforementioned cities from 1580 to 1680, examined
from the perspective of the semiotics of space and
cultural history, in order to understand the symbolic
and social relations that may be drawn from the
structural principles of their architecture.
Along with the concepts expressed by semiotics of
space, I consider in this essay Giulio Carlo Argan’s
theory of type. Research was directed to formal
analysis of the selected playhouses based on
international theorists who have published on the
features and forms of theatre architecture in the
Golden Age, often obtained from the few existing
primary sources, such as contracts signed to
refurbish or build the playhouses, old engravings,
panoramas, account books of the theatre
companies, and some rare descriptions of the
theatres in newspaper publications, among
others. I do not intend to shed a new light on
different features for amphitheatres, jeux de
paume, or corrales but to establish a comparative
study among those types concerning semiotics
and social aspects in each capital.
The French theorist of the Age of Enlightenment,
Quatremère de Quincy - who tried to transform
architecture into something that could be
classified - thoroughly described and registered
the formal characteristics of buildings and
established different categories not only based on
forms but also, above all, based on use or
function. Quincy’s concept of type carries a strong
1
This essay was developed based on research supported by CNPq
(PQ 1-C grant) and CAPES (Senior Fellowship). Thanks to the
collaboration of undergraduate students Edson Santiago, Marina
Nogueira, Silas Pinto and Luna Santos.
2 6
A “Found Space " means a space not idealized to be a theatre but
that can be used for the theatrical spectacle.
8
st
Evelyn Furquim Werneck Lima
social connotation, which is one of the focuses of
this essay as we are considering theatre
architectural designs as products of the societies
who have built and used them.3 He distinguishes
type from pattern, considering that the word type
presents not so much the image of a thing to copy
or completely imitate, but rather the idea of an
element which ought itself to serve as a rule for
the model. Type denotes the idea or the intention
for the construction of a structure. While model
means an object that should be repeated as it is,
type is an object according to which each artist
can conceive works of art or architecture that
may have no mutual resemblance but which
follow the same principles.4
Subsequently, Argan developed Quincy’s theories
and defined type as a scheme that allows
reducing a number of formal variants to a
supposed common structure and, in this sense,
the Italian theorist applied the notion of type to
the idea of the form of a building as embodied in
a structural scheme that may feature variations.
He identified three categories of type, and here I
use the first one, which considers the
configuration of buildings.5
The institutionalized theatre for "literate” society,
gradually being removed from the streets, was
generally left to its own devices and gave rise to
the division between literate and popular theatre,
which is still in evidence, in spite of many
controversies about how to draw lines of
separation.6 As a legacy of the Middle Ages,
theatre invaded plazas, markets, and other urban
spaces in many European cities. However, in some
cities, playhouses were built or adapted either as
a rectangular prism or as a polygonal arena for
permanent use. The proscenium arch theatre
from the Renaissance and Baroque remained the
“literate pattern” and was mainly applied to
3
See A,-C. Quatremère de Quincy, Encyclopedie Methodique -
Architecture, Volume 3, pt.2 (Liège, 1825), 555.
4
Ibid.
5
Giulio C. Argan, Projet et destin. Art, architecture, urbanisme,
(Paris, 1993), 59
Marvin Carlson, Places of Performance: The Semiotics of Theatre
Architecture, (Ithaca/London, 1989), 24.

__THEATRE ARCHITECTURE FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE 21 CENTURY__
indoor theatres or halls inside palaces, and will
not be considered in this essay.
To discuss theatre social history in relationship to
the different types of playhouses and to examine
these buildings and their meanings, I observed
how each audience reflected society. How did the
collective identity of the users of seventeenth
century theatrical spaces lead to intense
attendance at the different forms of playhouses in
London, Paris, and Madrid? In spite of their
dissimilarities, some architectural elements and
the use of the playhouses by their audiences are
quite similar. Stephen Greenblatt7 and Roger
Chartier8 elucidate how these capitals manifested
such cultural development and energy at the
same time. The former defends the notion of
cultural mobility and explains that mobility
studies should “shed light on hidden as well as
conspicuous movements of peoples, objects,
images, texts, and ideas”, but he also sustains
that mobility studies should “identify and analyse
the ‘contact zones’” where cultural goods are
exchanged. “Different societies constitute these
zones differently, and their varied structures call
forth a range of responses from wonder and
delight to avidity and fear. Certain places are
characteristically set apart from inter-cultural
contact; others are deliberately made open, with
the rules suspended that inhibit exchange.”9 I
understand that theatre activities were contact
zones and simultaneously inspired the
construction of public playhouses in the three
capitals.
Chartier points out the intense circulation of
ideas, writings, and appropriations, which leads
us to believe that, despite the differences of each
culture, the taste for theatre in the late sixteenth
and early seventeenth century involved all layers
of European societies, prompting the companies
to find a permanent home for the theatrical
spectacle. The French historian explains that:
Understood more sociologically than
phenomenologically, the notion of
appropriation makes it possible to appreciate
the differences in cultural apportionment, in
7
See Stephen Greenblatt, Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto,
(Cambridge, 2009), 250-253.
8 10
Roger Chartier, Cardenio between Cervantes and Shakespeare: The
Story of a Lost Play, (Cambridge, 2013).
9 11
Greenblatt, Cultural Mobility, 2009, 250.
st
the creative invention that lies at the very
heart of the reception process. A retrospective
sociology that has long made the unequal
distribution of objects the primary criterion of
the cultural hierarchy must be replaced by a
different approach that focuses attention on
differentiated and contrasting uses of the
same goods, the same texts, and the same
10
ideas.
Based on this statement, how can the study of the
different types of playhouses contribute to
revealing social practices in the three capitals?
The first results of this survey pointed out some
similarities and differences between the English
amphitheatres, the Spanish corrales, and the
French jeux de paume concerning their shapes
and especially their audiences. I have investigated
the circulation of architectural proposals that
may have invaded the three capitals chosen in the
period under study; though they maintained
different kinds of playhouses. The intense
circulation of books and people in seventeenth
century Europe, of itinerant troupes and of the
circulation of printed plays must have contributed
to the introduction of ingenious and innovative
types of playhouses for performing the great
number of dramas and comedies at that time.
About exchanges between France and England,
the scholar Sophie Deierkauf-Holsboer directs
attention to the French actor Floridor, who had
been to London, where he entered a theatre
company of which he soon became the head. In
1635, he gave performances in the London
Cockpit of Whitehall before the King and Queen of
England, then in a theatre at Drury Lane, where
he performed Mélite by Pierre Corneille,
Alcimédon by Ryer, and Le Trompeur puni by
George Scuderi.11 Other French actors and men of
theatre had certainly been in contact with English
companies at that time. Between the end of the
sixteenth century and the reopening of the
playhouses in England in 1660, English companies
successfully travelled around diverse geopolitical
areas, including France, staging works of
Shakespeare and his contemporaries at royal
palaces, schools, town markets, inn-yards and
churches. They adapted the scripts and adjusted
Roger Chartier, “Texts, Printings and Readings,” In: Lynn Avery
Hunt, ed, The New Cultural History, (Berkeley, 1989), 154-175, 171.
Wilma Deierkauf-Holsboer, Le Théâtre du Marais, (Paris, 1954), 74.
9

__THEATRE ARCHITECTURE FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE 21 CENTURY__
their performance style for audiences with a wide
range of status, education, wealth, religion,
ethnicity, and language. On a contract to
refurbish the Jeu de Paume du Becquet as a
theatre signed on July 19, 1646, found in the
French National Archives and published by Alan
Howe, who noticed the signature of an English
impresario, called Samuel Speede, the head of a
theatre group in Paris and director of the adapted
venue.12
In the field of dramatic literature, Chartier has
recently proved how exchanges were recurrent.
He investigated the missing and never printed
play Cardenio by Shakespeare and Fletcher in
which characters were taken from the book Don
Quixote of Cervantes - a masterpiece that
circulated throughout the major countries of
Europe, where it was translated and adapted for
the theatre. In his studies on this lost play,
Chartier verified that even before the launch of
the English translation of Don Quixote by Thomas
Shelton in 1612, the allusions to the “Errant
Knight” and other characters of the play were
already present on the English stages, He also
points out that many English people may have
read one of the nine editions of the novel
published in Europe before 1612 or 1613, when
Cardenio was staged in England.13
Other scholars have scrutinized these exchanges
from one culture to another. Greenblatt tried to
understand the negotiations through which works
of art obtained and amplified the powerful energy
that took place in the Elizabethan Era, and
considers Shakespeare´s plays to be the result of:
[…] collective exchanges and mutual
enchantments. They were made by moving
certain things - principally ordinary language
but also metaphors, ceremonies, dances,
emblems, items of clothing, well-worn stories,
and so forth - from one culturally delimited
zone to another. Those exchanges may be
historically determined, and they were
continually negotiated through appropriation,
14
purchase, symbolic acquisition.
12
“Bail du Jeu de Paume de Becquet à Samuel Speede in 19th July1646”,
French National Archives MC/ET/XCVIII/158, published by Alan Howe, Le
théâtre professionnel à Paris, 1600-1649, (Paris, 2000), 275.
13
Chartier, Cardenio, 2013, 35
14
Stephen Greenblatt. Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation
of Social Energy in Renaissance England. (Berkeley, L.A., 1988), 7-9.
10
st
Even authors from the seventeenth century were
aware of the concept of cultural appropriation.
Assuming the existence of multiple foreign
influences on French theatre and recognizing that
the Spaniards were particularly serious and tragic
in drama while the Italians were more concerned
with entertainment, the playwright Samuel
Chappuzeau - contemporary of Molière - states
that French dramatic literature of his time stood
at an intermediate level between Spanish and
Italian drama. He adds that "au fond nous
sommes plus obligez aux Espagnols qu´aux
Italiens, et n´estant redevables aux derniers que
de leurs machines et de leur musique, nous le
sommes aux autres de leurs belles inventions
poetiques; nos plus agreables comedies ayant
esté copiées sur les leurs".15 It is possible that this
similarity between Spain and France, pointed out
by the French dramatist, created a predisposition
toward the adoption of the principle of the
rectangle for the playhouses in both countries,
although the corrales had an uncovered courtyard
while the jeux de paume had a permanent roof.
Though not about theatrical exchanges, Linda
Peck’s contribution is also relevant when she
demonstrates how ideas of architecture were
generated from translations of Italian
architectural treatises, were brought about only
through importing skilled workers, and specialized
knowledge from abroad. Moreover, she highlights
inspiration derived from prints featured in books,
included popular engravings by Abraham Bosse,
and from the second-hand market dealing in
paintings of furnishings and linens and plates. In
her discussion of London's construction
environment, Peck shows the important role that
cultural exchange (or what she calls “cultural
borrowing”) plays in the definition and realization
of luxury16. We recognize that the luxury from
Italy was introduced in theatre architecture
especially in the British royal indoor halls and not
in the amphitheatres, but certainly the plays of
the time reflected the relevant aspects of Italian
culture, as noticed in Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson´s
15
“basically we are more obliged to the Spaniards than to the
Italians and we are only indebted to the latter in regard to their
machines and their music; we are indebted to the former for their
beautiful poetic inventions and our most delightful comedies having
been copied from theirs" (Samuel Chappuzeau, Le théâtre françois
divisé en trois livres, (Lyon, 1674), 43.
16
See Linda Levy Peck, Consuming Splendor: Society and Culture in
Seventeenth-Century England, (Cambridge, 2005).

__THEATRE ARCHITECTURE FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE 21 CENTURY__
masques, not to mention Jones´ Palladian project
for the Banqueting Hall.
As of the Renaissance, streets, squares, and
markets all over Europe continued to shelter the
ancient forms of public entertainment — parades
and processions, presentations for selling
medicines, acrobats, mimes, and jesters — whose
descendants can be seen even today in the
clowns, mimes, and jugglers who find popular
urban spaces to display their art, especially in
public squares. New spatial structures became
necessary as new absolute political power needed
to make a proper appearance on the urban stage.
The city ceased to be a democratic stage on which
every citizen could play his part, and it
increasingly became a place of spectacle for
centralized power. While the proscenium arch
theatre was being adopted in palaces and private
halls, and gradually spread throughout Italy and
other countries, different found spaces were
converted into permanent public playhouses in
London, Paris, and Madrid. These various adapted
typologies emerged as social spaces for
performing activities and had to be tuned into
political changes for radical adjustments in the
semiotics of their spaces.17
In London, John Brayne contracted the carpenters
William Sylvester and John Reynolds to build a
theatre for touring troupes in Whitechapel called
the Red Lion (1567), which is considered the first
permanent building specifically designed for
dramatic performances to be constructed in
England, but it was still according to the pattern
of the old tavern courtyard. It was not until 1576
that a public polygonal playhouse called The
Theatre was inaugurated in Shoreditch, followed
by the construction of many other playhouses.
Soon, the intense development of theatre as a
cultural and social manifestation expanded
throughout Europe, also involving theatrical plays
and novels. Unlike the majority of the corrales,
the British playhouses were run by impresarios
and not by religious brotherhoods.
In medieval Paris, there were many halls and
private courtyards but very few public spaces for
performance, which explains the very early
adoption of a permanent building for the public
17
For more information about the semiotics of theatrical spaces see
Marvin Carlson. Places of Performance, 1989.
st
theatre, the Hôtel de Bourgogne, which was run
by the Confrères de la Passion, and built on the
lands of the Palace of the Dukes of Bourgogne in
1548.18 In Madrid, the Confrarias (Brotherhoods)
were financing performances of plays in various
corrales from 1568. This small difference of
twenty years between Spain and France
concerning the introduction of a permanent
location and fixed public structure for the
performing arts also shows the circulation of
ideas and culture in Europe at the end of the
sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth
century.
Culture is a system of symbols shared by social
groups, translated as experiences and
representations expressed as codes, values,
discourses, and knowledge that give meaning to
actions, perceptions and structures of the world,
whether individually or collectively constructed.
Although different in their identities, theatrical
practices and theatre architecture in some
European countries were exchanged in the late
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The
history of culture should thus follow the Austrian
historian Carl Schorske, who proposed to
undertake “the empirical pursuit of pluralities as a
precondition to finding unitary patterns in
culture.” He sustains that “if we reconstruct the
course of change in the separate branches of a
cultural production according to their own modes,
we can acquire a firmer basis for determining the
similarities and differences among them.”19
Following this guideline, the essay develops a
comparative study of a theatrical architecture
"found" in pre-existing structures in the three
European capitals that for about a century
resisted the popularity of the proscenium arch
theatre, which has expanded in Italy since the
inauguration of the Andrea Palladio's Olympic
Theatre in Vicenza (1568). Nevertheless, the three
non-Italian architectural types examined here
were only replaced at the end of the 17th century.
The debate about how democratic the space
created in those early venues can be established
by examining all the social strata that attended
the public playhouses. How was the audience
distributed in those theatrical spaces in each city?
18
See Wiles, A Short History, 122.
19
Carl Schorske, Fin de Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture,
(Cambridge, UK, 1985), XXII.
11
 st
__THEATRE ARCHITECTURE FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE 21 CENTURY__

How much did the physical features of theatre weather. Above all these levels was the hut,
architecture segregate or amalgamate the which served as a deposit of materials, accessed
audience? by a ladder from the tiring-house. On the floor of
the stage, there was a large trapdoor, allowing
The London amphitheatres the characters to disappear or arise suddenly
from hell, but it also served to store some scenic
Concerning to shape, British playhouses
elements. In fact, the genuine Elizabethan
presented two types of architecture: (i) open-air
playhouses no longer exist. Descriptions in
amphitheatres, generally polygonal, with the
Thomas Platter´s and Phillip Henslowe´s diaries,
stage designed within a circular or polygonal
the Swan sketch by Johannes de Witt, the
open pit. The spectators stood in the pit including
panoramas by Hollar and Visscher, and recent
the stage, where the tickets were cheaper, or sat
archaeological studies, among other sources,
along the galleries arranged around the
have helped scholars to investigate this
courtyard. These playhouses were naturally lit,
vernacular architecture. In 1997, after a great
and could house between 1300 and 3000
deal of research, the Globe - one of the most
spectators, depending on the theatre. (ii) There
symbolic buildings of the seventeenth century for
were also indoor rectangular halls with the
having housed Shakespeare´s company - was
grandstand stage allocated as a smaller rectangle
rebuilt and is now a monument of cultural
on one side of the covered hall. Candles and
history.21 (Figure 1).
torches lighted the auditorium and the stage and
the audience of about 600 people would sit either
immediately in front of the stage, where the seats
were more expensive, or in the galleries arranged
on three other sides of the hall.

In the open-air amphitheatre, the stage was a

platform extending from one part of the almost
circle - in fact nearly all of them were polygonal –
in the direction of the centre of the courtyard,
and, at least in the later amphitheatres, there
were two staircase towers symmetrically located,
constituting the central axis of the venue. The
Elizabethan thrust stage extends into the
audience on three sides, connected to the
backstage area by its upstage end. Behind this
stage was the actors’ tiring-house, where two or
more openings allowed passage onto the stage,
through the curtains. At the level of the first order
of galleries, on the facade of the actors' tiring-
room, there was a small balcony or gallery often
used as an additional area for staging the plays.
Some scholars point out that this second small
gallery could hide the orchestra, but could also
serve for dramatic action when it was necessary
to represent activities above the other levels. 20
Extending from the location of the dressing
rooms, there was a cover, or heavens, supported
by two robust columns that rose from the floor of
the stage, shaped as a shelter protected from the
20
Gurr points out that in the earlier years of the seventeenth
century it is doubtful if the open-air playhouses used this upper
gallery for musicians. See Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage-
1574-1642, (Cambridge, 2009), 4th ed., 142-149, 182.
Figure 1 – The third Globe (1997), plans and sections,
sketches. Photo by N. Drago, 2012.
A semiotic analysis of the amphitheatre reflects
the idea of Western countries that a circular plan
symbolically centralizes the world. The circular
shape acts as a kind of bubble that facilitates
interaction between actor and audience. It is
noteworthy that when an incident happens in the
street, people soon form a circular grouping to
find out what happened, whereas the traditional
classroom is generally a rectangular space where
the lecturer/teacher stands in front of the
students. As pointed out by Wiles, "speeches
generate frontality whilst interaction and displays
of physical action generate circularity. Western
theatre has always had to negotiate these
opposing impulses."22 For Souriau, the human
21
For more information on this playhouse and its features, see
Franklin J. Hildy “Putting a Girdle around The Globe: Archeology and
Size of Shakespeare´s Theatre,” in Arquitetura, Teatro e Cultura.
E.F.W. Lima, ed (Rio de Janeiro, 2012), 121-138.
22
Wiles, A Short History, 2003, 164.

12

__THEATRE ARCHITECTURE FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE 21 CENTURY__
condition contains these two principles; namely,
the human being feels integrated in the world
inside the sphere but confronts the world through
his vision by removing the fourth wall of a cube,
which establishes a far more distant relationship
between the audience and the actors on stage.23
An Elizabethan amphitheatre also reflects the
idea of immanence. It is not difficult to recognize
the social power inherent in each playhouse in
Southwark that propelled an audience of almost
3000 people per session. The London
amphitheatre may be considered as a theatre-in
the-round where the effects of space on stage are
obtained by suggestion, by the magic of the
wonderful, and by the authority of the author
minimally assisted by planned figuration, and it is
more primitive and more Dionysian.24 Being
simultaneously a structure based upon the
principle of the “sphere”, closed in on itself
although open to the sky, the Elizabethan
amphitheatre offers multiple viewpoints as
architecture and as performance (Figure 2).
Figure 2 - The third Globe (1997), model by N. Drago, 2012.
When Argan analyses the meaning of the Early
Christian churches, he considers that those with a
central plan are more sacred and more ritualistic,
while those with a rectangular plan are more
adequate for religious education.25 This argument
reinforces my conviction in the metaphysical
approach to the Elizabethan amphitheatre as a
ritual space. In the present study, I recognize that
23
Souriau, “Le cube et la sphere,” 1950, 66-7.
24
For a more detailed study on the semiotics of the Elizabethan
amphitheatre, see Nathalie Toulouse Carasso, “La Scène centrale :
un modèle utopique ?”, Agôn, Dossiers, N°3: Utopies de la scène,
scènes de l'utopie, Reinventer le cercle, 24/01/2011, URL :
http://agon.ens-lyon.fr/index.php?id=1356.
25
See Argan, Projet et destin, 1993, 59.
st
Argan´s concepts also apply to the polygonal or
rectangular playhouses.
In her studies on architecture in the time of
Shakespeare, Muriel Cunin places emphasis on
the chronological coincidence between the
construction of public playhouses in Elizabethan
England and "la formidable vigueur de la création
théâtrale de cette époque, marquée par la
splendeur des grandes œuvres du théâtre
élizabéthain".26 This author acknowledges that
the Elizabethan public theatre presented unique
architecture with a strong relationship among all
of its architectural parts. According to Cunin,
“c´est l´espace dramatique qui s'adapte à
l´espace scénique à la troisième dimension, font
de l´espace théâtral un usage dynamique, et leur
théâtre fortement architecturé parait dégager de
manière symbolique les fondements mêmes de
l´architecture: horizontalité/verticalité,
intérieur/extérieur, haut/bas.”27
There was almost no stage design in Elizabethan
theatre, but objects such as painted fabrics and
curtains could be hung on stage. Mobile elements
such as beds, thrones, and tombs were scenic
objects in some plays. In Italy, Serlio had replaced
the symbols by the illusion of reality brought
about by the optical laws of perspective, although
in England, even if scholars were adopting the
Italian point of view to sustain the merit of the
unity of place, actors and entrepreneurs were
more concerned about the popular audience´s
taste and humour than about scholars´ opinions.
Glynne Wickman points out that in the
Elizabethan Era, the taste for conventional signs
to illustrate the place of the action was very
prominent, even for a natural landscape.28
Greenblatt analyses the social power of
Elizabethan England and states that the country
had a totalizing society, which is "one that posits
26
Muriel Cunin, Shakespeare et l´architecture. Nouvelles inventions
pour bien bâtir et bien jouer, (Paris, 2008), 28, “the formidable
strength of theatrical creation of that epoch, marked by the
splendor of the great works of the Elizabethan theatre.”
27
“It is the dramatic space that fits the stage space in the third
dimension, that provides the theatrical space with a dynamic use, and
their highly architected theatre seems to symbolically highlight the
very foundations of architecture: horizontality / verticality, inside /
outside, up / down.” (Cunin, Shakespeare et l´architecture, 28)
28
Glynne Wickman, “Emblème et image. Quelques remarques sur la
manière de figurer et de représenter le lieu sur la scène anglaise au
XVI e siècle,” in. Le lieu théatral à la Renaissance, Jean Jacquot, ed,
(Paris, 2002), 317-322, 1rst ed. 1965].
13

__THEATRE ARCHITECTURE FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE 21 CENTURY__
an occult network linking all human, natural and
cosmic powers and that claims on behalf of its
ruling elite a privileged place in this network".29
He means that, among other features, this social
energy had a relevant role in theatre and drama
of the time. On the other hand, the increase in
population, the basic need for food, and the fight
against epidemics should have led the leaders to
encourage the theatre as a way to alleviate the
anxiety of the population. He identifies that social
power that propelled the Elizabethan theatre,
encouraged by the patronage of the nobility.
However, I also realise the fact that the actors
and entrepreneurs chose an appropriate and
informal spherical structure - a construction in
wood that brought together the various social
classes, in direct contact with the actors, which
led that heterogeneous society to a profound
participation in the performing arts of the time.
Although only men could act on stage, men and
women attended both kinds of theatres, the
amphitheatre and indoor halls. A ticket for the
public amphitheatres at ground level was an "old
penny" and so the place was attended by the
working classes, while in private theatres,
attended by aristocrats and rich merchants, the
ticket was "six old pence". Public performances
would cost from 1 to 3 pennies, while the private
theatre would cost from 2 to 26 pennies. Andrew
Gurr describes audience’s places according to the
prices of the tickets and argues that - in contrast
with the amphitheatres (which were in a way like
the portable stages for nomadic troupes) - , in the
hall-playhouses inside the city and not in the
swampy outskirts, people who could not pay
much for a ticket would take a seat far away from
the stage. The more the spectator could pay, the
closer to the actors he would sit; such was the
habit in Paul’s Playhouse, next to Saint Paul’s
Cathedral since 1575, and in the first Blackfriars,
both playhouses located in the noblest area of the
city.30 Gurr highlights that the upper class was
used to attending public and private playhouses,
but the lower classes could only afford to go to
the public amphitheatres.31.As I am examining the
public playhouses, I will focus only on the
amphitheatres.
29
Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations, 1988, 2.
30
Gurr. The Shakespearean Stage, 142-149.
31
Ibid.
14
st
London maps from Sebastian Munster’s (1558)
until Wenzel Hollar’s last one (1673) show that
English public amphitheatres were located in the
suburbs, namely in the "liberties", which were still
lands whose urban parameters were very few.
The construction of these venues at the
outskirts of the city of London, especially in
those liberties on the left bank of the Thames,
was strategic for theatre impresarios, as those
lands were an “ambiguous realm, a borderland
whose legal parameters and privileges were
open-ended and equivocally defined. The
liberties were free or at liberty from manorial
rule or obligation to the Crown and only
nominally under the jurisdiction of the lord
mayor.”32 Stephen Mullaney also highlights the
difficulty in determining the real social strata of
the place. He remarks that distinguishing
citizen from non-citizen “became a doubtful
task as the displaced and marginal population
of the country came to London in increasing
numbers to take advantage of the anonymity
the city offered and to escape from the rigid
traditional structures which the city itself had
once served to embody”. 33 The liberties were
free from obligations to the Royal Crown and
only "nominally under the jurisdiction of the
Lord Mayor," because they were not officially
recognized as "outside the law". This author
also claims that the liberties were ideal areas
for theatres as they were "where the anxieties
and insecurities of life in a rigidly organized
hierarchical society could be given relatively
free reign."34 This location of the amphitheatre
allowed Elizabethan playwrights and actors to
occupy a space in which they could criticize and
comment on the contradictions and
transformations of their culture and their time
with greater freedom.35 This stimulated the
playwrights to experimentations, having the
audience around the stage as occurred in the
public theatres in Shoreditch and Southwark.
Taking an anthropological approach, Mullaney
considers that the pre-modern city peripheries
were places where a species of freedom reigned
32
Steven Mullaney, The place of the stage. License, play and power
in Renaissance England, (Chicago, 1988), 21.
33
Ibid., 19.
34
Ibid., 21
35
Interestingly, we have noticed from analysis of the maps from the
time in Paris that it was not only in London that the private
entrepreneurs or the religious brotherhoods built the first
playhouses on the outskirts of the city.

__THEATRE ARCHITECTURE FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE 21 CENTURY__
and they were contradictory, ambivalent areas
of transition between a domain of authority
and another kind of space.
In London, as of the inauguration of the first
public amphitheatre, The Theatre, in 1576, an
innovative relationship between the new
permanent space of the stage and the real
location of the theatre itself took place. In
Southwark, when the existing bear baiting arena
was destroyed, to the delight of the Puritans, the
Bear Garden (1583) was built on the right bank of
the Thames River, with a removable stage, and,
later on, the Rose (1588)36, the Swan (1595)37,
and the Globe (1599).38 Still on the fringes of the
town, but in the northeast area of the city,
Londoners built the Fortune (1599)39 and the Red
Bull (1604)40 in Clerkenwell. These two outlying
areas to both the Northeast and South were full
of taverns and other entertainment
establishments, and a very heterogeneous
population attended the playhouses.
The audience in those public amphitheatres
included all genders and social classes. Thomas
Platter´s diary, written during his travels in
England and France, confirms that respectable
women of different social strata did frequent the
Elizabethan theatres.41 The most expensive
seating was in the Lord’s box or balcony behind
the stage, looking at the action from behind.
Otherwise, the higher the seats, the more an
audience member had to pay.42 In a recent
36
See “The Rose Playhouse Agreement,” in Documents of the Rose
Playhouse, Carol Rutter, ed, (Manchester, 1984), 37-39. Republished
by J.R. Mulryne and Margareth Shewring, ed, Skakespeare´s Globe
rebuilt. (Cambridge, 1997), 178-179. See also Gurr, Shakespeare´s
Opposites: The Admiral´s Men 1594-1625, (Cambridge, 2009).
37
See Gurr´s comments on the “Remarks on the London Theatres”
by Joannes de Witt (1596), and the sketch of the Swan,” (Gurr. The
Shakespearean Stage, 2009, 162-168).
38
After examining the scarce evidence and “after thirty years of
debates and calculations over its shape and size”, Gurr emphasizes
that there is “still not much agreement that the Wanamaker project
on Bankside got its reconstruction right,” (Gurr, The Shakespearean
Stage, 2009, 153).
39
All scholars who study the Fortune refer to the “The Fortune
Contract (1599),” transcription from R. A. Foakes and R.T. Rickert,
eds, Henslowe´s Diary, (Cambridge, 1961), 307-310. In
Shakespeare´s Globe Rebuilt, J.R. Mulryne and Margareth Shewring,
ed., 1997, 180-182.
40
For more information on the Red Bull see Gurr, The
Shakespearean Stage, 147.
41
Platter, apud Alfred B.Harbage. Shakespeare´s Audience. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1941, pp. 74-78
42
A seat in the Lord’s Room cost one shilling or twelve pence, a seat
in a Gentleman’s Room cost sixpence, a seat in the galleries cost two
st
lecture, Thomas Larque pointed out that “some
Elizabethan documents suggest that the reason
for this range of prices was the richer patron’s
desire to be as far as possible from the stink of
the groundlings”43, even though Platter, who
attended the amphitheatres in 1599, only
mentioned that:
The playing places are so constructed that
[the actors] play on a raised scaffold, and
everyone can see everything. However, there
are different areas and galleries where one
can sit more comfortably and better, and
where one accordingly pays more. Thus,
whoever wants to stand below pays only one
English penny, but if he wishes to sit, he
enters through another door where he gives a
further penny, but if he wants to sit in the
most comfortable place on a cushion, where
he will not only see everything but also be
seen, he gives at another door a further
44
English penny.
It is possible that some noblemen did not mind
being near ordinary people since they could be
near the actors and were concerned about
“hearing” the plays.
The jeux de paume
In Paris, the jeux de paume was the first fixed
stage existing in the old town after being
restructured as theatres. This popular
recreational venue was often used as theatre
since it was enclosed and presented a gallery for
the audience. The jeu de paume was a game that
possibly gave rise to the game of tennis being
introduced to Europe around the thirteenth
century. During the Renaissance, when the game
was already being played with rackets, there
were about 250 jeux de paume in Paris for its
pence and it cost only a penny to stand in the pit, in: February, 12,
2013, http://shakespearean.org.uk/elizthea1.htm
43
Thomas Larque. A Lecture on Elizabethan Theatre. A lecture
originally given to BTEC in Performing Arts students as part of their
course in 2001, November13, 2013,
http://shakespearean.org.uk/elizthea1.htm)
44
See “Thomas Platter visits London Theatres,” Short transcription
from Peter Razzel, The Journals of two Travelers in Elizabethan and
Early Stuart England: Thomas Platter and Horacio Busino. (London,
1995), 166-167, in Shakespeare ´s Globe rebuilt, 190-191. See also
Platter, apud John Lough. Paris Theatre Audiences in the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. London: Oxford University
Press. 1972, (1rst edition 1957), 19.
15

__THEATRE ARCHITECTURE FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE 21 CENTURY__
300,000 inhabitants.45 These buildings were
adapted for theatrical troupes and were
transformed into typical French theatres, with a
rectangular auditorium, stage area, and
backstage. On the three sides not occupied by the
stage, the impresarios fitted galleries with two or
three orders of boxes.46
Therefore, it was not only in London that public
theatres were built far from the central area of
the city. Mullaney recalls that in France the
liberties were known as "banlieux: places of
proclamation where the law was made known,
but also, as the name suggests, places of exile or
banishment (...) outside the magic circle described
by power, authority and community.”47 As in the
liberties, the banlieux of Paris were also located
on muddy grounds and poorly served areas, with
beggars and homeless. The first jeux de paume in
Paris were mostly located beyond the ancient
walls that protected the city. The theatre of the
Hôtel de Bourgogne – the first public playhouse
built in Paris - was located next to the wholesale
market (Les Halles), adjacent to the wall built by
Philip Augustus in 1200, refortified in 1400 by
Charles V, and only demolished in 1660. This
theatre existed until the late eighteenth century
and was designed in the form of a jeu de
paume.48 For a long time the Hôtel de Bourgogne
had an important competitor: the Marais
Theatre.
Although the Hôtel de Bourgogne was not
originally a jeu de paume, its shape and
dimensions were very similar to those of the
Marais Theatre which had been adapted from the
former Jeu de Paume du Maretz and used as a
theatre since 1635. Burned down in 1644, this
playhouse was re-opened with all the new
technical possibilities for the machine plays, but
kept the jeu de paume shape. As an example of a
French playhouse with a rectangular plan, we will
45
The jeu de paume was a rectangular structure with openings at
the top of the walls and gable roof. Gallery seats for spectators were
disposed along one side of the long wall, so it was sufficient to erect
a stage in one of the extremities and complete the galleries along
the three sides of the building to use the venue as a theatre.
46
Anne Surgers, “La Scène Élisabéthaine (fin XVI siècle - 1642):
Une Allégorie du Monde,” in Scénographies du Théâtre
Occidental, (Paris, 2007), 119.
47
Mullanney, The place of the stage, 21.
48
Deierkauf-Holsboer published the measurements of the Hôtel
de Bourgogne based on a contract found in the French National
Archives, and it was very much like a jeu de paume. See
Deierkauf-Holsboer, L´Hôtel de Bourgogne, (Paris, 1968), 19.
16
st
examine the Marais Theatre, whose features
were obtained from the documents of July 8,
1678, a “memoire de ce quíl fault faire au Jeu de
paulme des Maretz” signed by the architect
Garengeau, found in the French National Archives
and first published by Jen Lemoine in 1936.49
There are many controversies about correct
features of this theatre. The documents published
by Lemoine concern the contract for the
adaptation of the theatre. They describe the
playhouse as a rectangle of 34.43 metres long by
11.70 metres wide, although those dimensions
were contested by scholar Deierkauf-Holsboer,
who attests that the jeu de paume burned down
in 1644 was rebuilt by the carpenter Yon Pivrin
with the outside dimensions of 38.00 metres x
12.00 metres. 50 Other scholars have different
opinions on the Marais Theatre´s features,
particularly John Golder.51 He demonstrated that
the venue was smaller and more intimate and,
upon examining the same primary source, he
concluded that the memoire was misinterpreted. I
analysed this type of playhouse considering his
proposed measurements (Figure 3).
Figure 3 - The Marais Theatre after 1678– conjectural plans and
sections, sketches by N. Drago, 2012.
On the facades, two massive pediments
completed the building width wise. As for the
dimensions of the stage, the rapport from July 8,
49
See “Report of the items to be carried out in the Jeu de Paume du
Marais,” in Jean Lemoine, La Première du Cid : le théâtre - les
interprètes, d'après des documents inédits, (Paris, 1936). See also
Allan Howe. Le théâtre professionnel, 270.
50
Deierkauf-Holsboer, Le Théâtre du Marais, (Paris, 1954), t. I, 110.
In fact, the carpenter was Yon Perrin as mentioned by Howe, Le
théâtre professionnel, 2000.
51
John Golder. “The Théâtre du Marais in 1644: Another Look at the
Old Evidence Concerning France´s Second Public Theatre”. Theatre
Survey, 25, Nov. 1984, 127-152.

__THEATRE ARCHITECTURE FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE 21 CENTURY__
1678 describes the stages and its dependencies in
precise enough detail to carry out a satisfactory
reconstitution of the building. The auditorium had
two superimposed stages: the lower stage was
1.95 metres above ground level and occupied the
entire width of the room, 11.70 metres, and was
12.67 metres deep. The second stage was about 6
metres high. The effective usable space for
performance was 9.75 metres deep. The
separation wall undoubtedly served to improve
the acoustics of the hall and hide the actors tiring
room. Altogether, there were ten dressing rooms
for the actors, which consisted of small stalls
along the front facade. The first line presented
five dressing rooms set up at the floor level of the
lower stage and the rest were at ground level.
Neither the length nor the width of the dressing
rooms has been determined. Eight pillars
supported the floor of the upper stage. A stairway
linked the stages and connected the floor to the
first and second stages. The Marais Theatre had
two superimposed orders of boxes, with eighteen
boxes each, arranged parallel to the three walls
(at the side of the theatre and in the rear). Based
on Golder´s studies, my students have built a
conjectural model of the French type to
understand its internal spaces and social meaning
(Figure 4).
Figure 4 - The Marais Theatre, conjectural model by L.
Santos, and N. Drago, 2012.
Nevertheless, it was not the prerogative of the
French to use the principle of the rectangle like
the British aristocracy, which also had its
rationalist theatres based on this shape. The
second theatre adapted to a huge hall of the
Convent of Blackfriars (1596) in London had the
same provisions and numerous similarities to the
Marais theatre because the boxes surrounding
the parterre and upper galleries had similar
architectural features.
st
What differed in the theatres was the depth of
the stage, which was enlarged in the Marais
Theatre after the reconstruction of 1644, and the
illusionism which took over the scenic area at the
end of theseventeenth century, separating the
audience from the actors, while in London,
"scenery, in the sense of perspective back-cloths
and flats, had never been a feature of the English
stage, incompatible with the tradition of the
stage within the auditorium".52 In France, the
focus was to be on the stage, while in England,
the intimacy made possible by the public
polygonal amphitheatres prevailed. However, in
London, after the Restoration, many playhouses
obeyed the features found at the Marais Theatre.
Playwrights such as William Davenant and
Thomas Killigrew had established their theatres in
former tennis courts. Davenant had Lisle's Tennis
Court converted into a theatre in 1661.53 Even
after his death in 1668, his troupe continued to
perform in this venue until 1671, while Killigrew's
acting troupe performed in a remodelled Gibbon's
Tennis Court from 1660 to 1663. It is probable
that the idea of transforming tennis courts into
playhouses came from the English actors who had
performed in Paris in their exile during the Puritan
Persecution in England, when theatres were
closed. In addition, King Charles II, who spent a
long period in France, contributed to spreading
French culture in England after the Restoration.
A description of the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1599
explains the unpretentiousness of the French
auditorium by the end of the sixteenth century:
Les représentations ont lieu dans une grande
salle, sur une estrade tendue de tapisserie; les
gens du peuple ne paient que moitié prix, à la
54
condition de rester debout. Mais les
spectateurs payant place entière peuvent
monter dans les galeries, où ils peuvent
s´asseoir, se tenir debout ou s´appuyer sur
52
Alistair James Potts. The Development of the Playhouse in
Seventeenth-Century London. Trinity Hall Cambridge. Doctoral
Thesis / Department of Architecture and History of Art, Cambridge
University. June 1998. In: Dec 11, 2011,
http://playhousehistory.co.uk.html.
53
Lisle's Tennis Court theatre was the first public playhouse in
London to feature the moveable scenery that would become a
standard feature of Restoration theatres.
54
Pierre Mélèse explains that in the parterre stood the crowd of less
fortunate spectators, “who could not even pay 15 souls or even who
entered without any payment, despite the royal prohibitions, such
as: officers, poets, citizens, artisans, even footmen”. Pierre Melèse
apud John Lough. Paris: Theatre Audiences in the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries, (London, 1972), 55.
17

__THEATRE ARCHITECTURE FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE 21 CENTURY__
une rampe, de façon à voir beaucoup mieux.
55
C´est là ou les dames ont l´habitude d´aller.
Nevertheless, in spite of the popular character of
the Hôtel de Bourgogne, King Louis XIII used to
attend some performances in that playhouse.56
Though the Marais Theatre had been a jeu de
paume since the sixteenth century, it became a
playhouse in 1635, and it retained its tennis
court plan after being refurbished in 1644. The
use of the jeu de paume as a model for the
public playhouses is generally considered an
incidental aspect to dramatic life, simply
adopted through convenience. However, in fact,
it was a reflection of a change in French society,
which, by that time subjected to a more
established political situation that had acquired
the taste for culture, especially for theatre and
literature. It is noteworthy that the French
Academy was officially founded in 1635 by
Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King
Louis XIII, who maintained the troupe at the
Marais Theatre and founded the Palais Royal
Theatre in his palace (former Palais Cardinal)
inaugurated in 1641.
In the years from 1625 to 1635, as the theatre
became much more popular in Paris and could at
last support two permanent French companies, a
revolution took place in the composition of the
audience. Having been disorderly, not
respectable venues in the reign of Henri IV, by
1640 Parisian public theatres had acquired
uprightness and respectful sociability, even
though spectators were drawn from different
ranks of society. The same Thomas Platter, who,
besides visiting London, spent some time in Paris
on his way back from Medical School in
Montpellier and attended performances given by
Valleran Lecomte and his company at Hôtel de
Bourgogne, described the theatre and its seating
arrangements, including a reference to the
55
“Performances are held in a large room, on a stage covered with
tapestry; commoners pay only half price, on the condition of
standing. But spectators paying the whole price can go up into the
galleries, where they can sit, stand or lean on a balustrade, so that
they can see much better. It is in this place that women are in the
habit of going.” “Description de Paris en 1599”, Memoires de la
Société de l´histoire de Paris (1896), p. 196, in Lough, Paris: Theatre
Audiences, 20.
56
Journal de Jean Héroard sur l'enfance et la jeunesse de Louis XIII
(1601-1628), Eudore Soulié et Edouard de Barthélemy, ed. (Paris,
1868), t. II, 121. The authors point out that in December 21, 1614,
King Louis XIII attended a play in the Hôtel de Bourgogne.
18
st
presence of women in the galleries. 57 First, the
refurbished jeux de paume was able to have
bourgeois, students and servants together in the
parterre (pit), almost at the same level as the
stage, and women and respectable spectators
would sit in the boxes and galleries at the sides
and back of the rectangular auditorium. The
rebuilt Marais Theatre was designed to attract a
more demanding group of theatregoers in the
1640s. In 1647, in the face of competition, the
Hôtel de Bourgogne was also refurbished in
accordance with the new design of its opponent.
At the Marais Theatre, a place in the parterre
was rented for half-louis, a place in the
amphitheatre on the third floor was one louis,
and a place in the boxes, eight louis. The King
and the court went to the Marais Theatre twice
from 1655 to 1661, as described by Samuel
Chappuzeau.58 By that time, the rich noble
families of Paris had begun to build their
mansions in the old area of swamps, near the
Marais Theatre.59 Soon audiences ceased to be
essentially plebeian and became predominantly
aristocratic; they were no longer unpolished and
scandalous people, and, partly under the
influence of respectable women, the new plays
performed at the Hôtel de Bourgogne and at the
Marais Theatre became much more refined,
from the aesthetic and the moral point of view. 60
The meaning of this typology denotes the intense
desire to share plays with all audiences. However,
the semi-public space typology of the jeu de paume,
which initially allowed almost complete
participation of the audience, was gradually
showing signs of social stratification, especially after
the introduction of the machine plays that required
special effects and led to the adoption of the
proscenium arch. After reconstruction in 1644, the
building was composed of four functional blocks
(access, auditorium, stage, services), unusual in
France. The access stairs to the first gallery already
anticipated the staircase of the Italian theatres,
although the horizontal accesses to the boxes and
the amphitheatre were still quite narrow.
57
Platter in Lough, Paris: Theatre Audiences, 19.
58
See Chappuzeau, Le théâtre françois, 42- xxii
59
Jean-Pierre Babelon. “Essor et décadence du Marais de la
Renaissance à la Révolution,”in: Marais: Mythe et realité, Babelon,
ed (Paris, 1987), 63-144, 105.
60
Lough, Paris: Theatre Audiences, 1972, 11

__THEATRE ARCHITECTURE FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE 21 CENTURY__
The auditorium continued to evolve, and segregation
of members of the audience became increasingly
specific. Benches appeared in the parterre and the
less privileged spectators would have to move to the
top floor of the galleries. From 1656 on, the
sophisticated spectators, anxious to see as well as to
be seen, took seats on either side of the stage.61 This
separation of spectators from different social classes,
which arose spontaneously in the spaces of the jeux
de paume, became a definitive architectural layout
and marked the evolution of French theatre
architecture in what was to be the theatre in the
eighteenth century. When the new theatre for the
Comédie-Française designed by François Orbay was
inaugurated in 1689, its shape was already that of
the proscenium arch theatre.
The Corrales
The corral de comedias (theatrical courtyard) was
emblematic of the Golden Age and held a symbolic
place in the social and cultural life of Spanish cities,
in addition to being a theatrical space that housed
the great productive output of playwrights in that
historical period. The construction process of the
corral was gradually improved, obeying the
increasing needs of the theatre, since its design had
been changing for over half a century to acquire a
nearly final form in the 1630s. At that time, in
Madrid, one can verify the adaptation process of a
creative architecture, which represented the “found
space” for performance at a time when the theatre,
literacy and the visual arts had greatly improved.
As of the second half of the sixteenth century,
itinerant theatre companies found a fixed place for
their performances in Spain. The comedy, which
had previously been performed in many public
spaces, was then performed in a pre-existing
creative space. Gradually, the stage set up inside
the courtyards within blocks of buildings that were
rented and adapted started to become theatrical
venues for the intense Spanish drama production
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
although the plays performed at the celebration of
Corpus Christi would still use the pageant wagons
up to the end of the Medieval Era.
61
At the Guénégaud Theatre, which housed the Marais Company
and Moliere´s troupe (after his death in 1673), the auditorium, also
followed the principle of the cube, adapted from the Jeu de Paume
de la Bouteille. See Jan Clarke, The Guénégaud Theatre in Paris
(1673-1680), (Lewinston, 1998), Vol. 1, 19.
st
The typology of the corrales prevailed for a long
time for public venues, but architects soon began
to adapt large rectangular private halls such as
the auditoria in the Royal Palaces following the
example of the Royal Palace of Madrid and the
Buen Retiro Palace. Unlike London amphitheatres,
isolated structures built in separate buildings,
almost all the corrales bordered on other
buildings. Many of them, such as those in Madrid,
were built inside a courtyard, a pre-existing open-
air rectangle behind a house in a residential
mansion. The chosen house, whose facade was
aligned with the street, served as an alleyway; the
corral, with its stage, dressing rooms and galleries
deep inside, was delimited by all the walls that
separated it from neighbouring properties.
The ecclesiastical authorities in Spain, instead of
persecuting the men of theatre, who
professionalized around 1550, collaborated with
them, profiting from the incredible passion that
Spaniards from all social classes had for the
theatre. Meanwhile, in England, the actors and
playwrights were seen as idlers, and they had to
settle on the outskirts of the City of London.
The theatrical devices of the Spanish corral were far
less sophisticated than those of English
amphitheatres, though likewise devoid of a real
proscenium. For the whole stage design, two
painted screens were used (one inner and one
outer) on which artists drew some significant
elements. In Madrid, the Corral de la Cruz was built
in 1579, while the first public playhouse specially
built in London was The Theatre in Shoreditch, built
in 1576. After the Corral de la Cruz was inaugurated,
several smaller corrales (Valdivieso, Pacheca,
Burguilhos, among others) were supplanted and lost
customers to the new corrales of the religious
Brotherhoods, the Corral del Principe and Corral de
la Cruz. It is worth noting that the First Globe (1599-
1613) and the First Fortune (1600-1621) are
correspondent to the second phase of construction
of the Corral del Principe in Madrid.
Despite the differences between the amphitheatres
and corrales, this study has confirmed that at least
three common Elizabethan structures for performing
arts were adapted in a very similar manner to the
corrales: the Boar's Head Inn (1557), the Red Lyon
(1567), and the first building erected for the Fortune
(1600). Both the English and the Spanish
constructions evoke the old guesthouses with
19

__THEATRE ARCHITECTURE FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE 21 CENTURY__
courtyards in which the troupes performed their
plays. Glynne Wickham has already pointed out that
the Fortune and the Red Bull were in fact similar to
the corrales, concerning both the stage and
auditorium. He adds that the resemblances of “the
Boar's Head Inn in London at the end of the sixteenth
century are so striking as to throw some light on the
arrangements pertaining during the early
seventeenth century at the first Fortune and at the
Red Bull.”62 I have compared the huge Fortune, built
as an inn-yard playhouse and the small Corral
Cervantes de Alcalá de Henares through a conjectural
drawing and confirmed those similarities (Figure 5).
Figure 5 - The Fortune and the corral Alcalá de Henares,
sketches by N. Drago, 2012.
I have chosen the Corral Cervantes de Alcalá de
Henares as a case study for the corral type because
the document signed between the carpenter
Francisco Sanchez and the Concejo de la Villa still
exists. The playhouse was reconstructed on the
same site; and there were successful archaeological
studies to allow the execution of perfect drawings of
the building carried out by the scholars Coso Marin,
Higiero Sanchez and Sanz Ballesteros.63 The
courtyard was delimited by existing buildings and
there were spaces reserved for the audience and the
actors. On the second floor and in front of the stage,
the corral featured the Cazuela (bleachers for
women of the common public) and general stands
and galleries. The bleachers were of a wooden
structure, and disposed along the courtyard below
the galleries for the particular compartments
(aposentos) where the spectators could be seated.64
62
Glynne Wickham. Early English Stages: 1576-1600, (London,
1972), 115.
63
M.A. Coso Marin; M. Higuera Sanchez-Pardo; J. Sanz Ballesteros. El
teatro Cervantes de Alcalá de Henares: 1602-1866. Estudios y
Documentos, (London, 1989).
64
N. D. Shergold, A History of the Spanish Stage from Medieval
Times until the End of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1967, 405).
20
st
Bleachers were also disposed along the three sides
of the corral until they met the stage, and below
there was an alley to communicate with the actors'
dressing room situated under the stage.65
The scenic box consisted of a 6-feet-wide by 4-feet-
deep stage, which was also very high. The upper
area of performance was the "balcon de las
apariencias", which was formed by a wooden
structure with a gallery on the first floor. Behind the
wooden balustrades were a corridor and a staircase
so that the actors could enter the higher stage and
assume their places in the performance. (Figure 6).
Figure 6 – The Corral Alcalá de Henares, plans and
sections, sketches by N. Drago.
The courtyard in this corral was not oblong, featuring
a pit of four different measurements, 5.85 m x 6.38 m
x 8.55 m x 9.23 m. For a better understanding of this
type, I have analysed a model built by my students
(Figure 7).
Figure 7 - Corral de Alcalá de Henares, model by L. Santos,
and N. Drago, 2013.
Although there was not a previous architectural
The plans of the Corral del Principe in existence also suggest four
wooden pillars, two in the center and one on each side. The latter
pillars constitute those that supported the roof, the upper corridor
and the bleachers.
65
M.A. Coso Marin; M. Higuera Sanchez-Pardo; J. Sanz Ballesteros,
El teatro Cervantes, 23.

__THEATRE ARCHITECTURE FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE 21 CENTURY__
project for Spanish or French sixteenth century
playhouses, the principle adopted for the physical
arrangements and the stage was that of the
“rectangle”, as the playhouses were built with or
adapted to rectangular plans.66 According to this
principle, the best position should be the one in
front of the stage. The ideal spectator should
always stay at a fixed point but with a rotating
view to watch actors moving on stage.
The audience
The continuous process of adding compartments
(aposentos) with separate entrances through the
neighbouring buildings attached to the structure of
the corral makes the architecture of Spaniard
corrales diverge greatly from Italian Renaissance
theatres, which were planned following the models
and rules published in many Treatises of the time.
The nobles and bourgeois, men and women of high
social status, acquired the attached compartments in
order to enter the corral and arrive at a comfortable
place of their own without mingling with common
people and women. It was in these private
compartments that they settled to watch the plays in
corrales, completely apart from the ordinary people.
The common audience stood in the parterre (pit),
at the ground floor, but it consisted only of male
spectators. According to Andre Dégaine, the
parterre was also attended by the noisy
mosqueteros", always ready to throw fruit and
eggs at the audience.67 The women of the working
class were separated from the men in the cazuela,
an elevated platform with bleachers on the second
floor, facing the stage.68 The cheapest tickets of a
corral were those in the open-air parterre (patio),
where people would stand in front of the stage,
which was almost 1.90 metres high. In 1602, to get
into the courtyard one needed to pay 10
maravedis, but to sit in benches around the yard,
the lower bourgeoisie would pay 34 maravedis, but
playgoers from the higher levels of society would
66
At first the corral was not exactly a permanent public playhouse as
it consisted of an open yard surrounded by existing building where a
platform would be set up as a stage and a curtain would be hung
behind so that actors could dress.
67
Andre Dégaine, Histoire du théâtre dessinée. De la pré-histoire à
nos jours, tous les temps et tous les pays, (Paris, 2000), 142.
68
Arroniz claims one must avoid misunderstanding, because in
Madrid, women of high social status also occupied places preferably
in the compartments of the surrounding dwellings. The "Cazuelas"
were for women of the people, see Othon Arroniz, Teatros y
Escenarios del Siclo de Oro, (Madrid, 1977), 62-63.
st
pay up to 578 maravedis or 17 reales to sit in the
galleries or boxes on higher levels.69
In the corral of the Golden Age, the interior
architectural form functions through imaginary
walls that separate the audience, putting them
into watertight compartments - the nobility, the
authorities, the common people, and women of
modest social condition. The plays and shows are
for all, but without mixing social classes.
Scholars´ divergences on the physical
characteristics of the three types
Various scholars developed studies on the physical
characteristics of theatrical spaces nevertheless
some of them diverge in their interpretation of
primary sources. This allows confirming Chartier´s
concept regarding the reception of a work of art,
which can be perceived as having different
meanings in various manners from one individual to
another - although in this particular case, these
works have not been evaluated in situ but rather
through analysis of sketches, engravings,
descriptions or contracts for refurbishment, or
landholding and notarial documents. I verified that
there are conflicts in how different scholars interpret
the architecture and the features of playhouses,
which disappeared more than three centuries ago.
Since the 1900s, authors have been publishing their
studies on the possible number of sides of the
London amphitheaters, especially the Swan and the
Globe. Concerning the diameter of the second
Globe, based upon Hollar´s sketch, C. Walter Hodges
(1973) published Shakespeare's Second Globe: The
Missing Monument70, and Richard Hosley (1981)
published The Shape and Size of the Second Globe71,
both of whom suggested that Hollar's work was an
inaccurate representation of the playhouse,
particularly about the positioning of the external
stair turrets. Based on more precise research
responding to archaeological evidence and a new
analysis of the sketch, in 1999, Tom Fitzpatrick72
69
J.E. Varey and N. D. Shergold. Teatros y comedias en Madrid.
1600-1650. Estudios y documentos. (Madrid, 1971).
70
C. Walter Hodges (1973) Shakespeare's Second Globe: The Missing
Monument, (London, 1973).
71
Richard Hosley. "The Shape and Size of the Second Globe," in The
Third Globe, C.W. Hodges, S. Schoenbaum and L. Leone, eds,
(Detroit: 1981), 82-107.
72
Tim Fitzpatrick, “The Fortune Contract and Hollar’s Original
Drawing of Southwark: Indications of a Smaller First Globe,”
Shakespeare Bulletin, 14: 4 (Fall 1996), 5-10 , and "Reconstructing
Shakespeare's Second Globe using CAD design tools," Early Modern
21

__THEATRE ARCHITECTURE FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE 21 CENTURY__
proved that instead of 20 sides, the second Globe
had 16 sides and was not as big as stated by John
Orrel in The Quest for Shakespeare´s Globe73, who
was responsible for the final features that were
employed in the rebuilding of this theatre in 1997.
As for the public theatres in Paris, I have considered
the results of Golder´s studies about the Marais
Theatre published in 1984, although he disagreed
with Holsboer´s interpretations of the few documents
in existence about this particular playhouse.
Spanish corrals have been investigated and results
published by Shergold (1967), Varey (1989), Allen
(1983), Davis (2004) Arroniz (1977), Ballesteros
(1989), and de la Haza (1987), among others, who
consulted mainly written and notarized documental
sources in the Spanish archives since the
iconography is also scarce or was erroneously
reinterpreted in the nineteenth century, as
demonstrated by Shergold´s essay in 1963
(republished in 2002). In that essay, the author
contests a sketch showing the interpretation of the
architecture of the Corral del Príncipe by the graphic
artist Juan Comba - developed in the late nineteenth
century and, since then, intensely published.74
Regardless of the scholars’ discussion of
measurements, the three types of theatrical spaces I
have examined in this essay gave rise to: (i) different
social relationships; (ii) different relations between
the actors and the audience; and (iii) different
relations between the playhouses and the city.
Different types of playhouses and their social
interactions
In the Marais Theatre in 1631, Le Noir´s troupe
tried to adapt its oblong auditorium to
accommodate the nobles, the bourgeois, and the
women of high society who began to acquire a
taste for drama, but Lough75 emphasizes that
there were often quarrels and whistles in the
parterre where the population remained standing
during the show. How could architecture modify
social relations in each type of playhouse? Did all
types of people meet when they arrived or when
they left the theatre? At the Jeu de Paume on the
Literature Studies, March 2004 (online refereed journal -)
http://www.shu.ac.uk/emls/ emlshome.html
73
John Orrel, The Quest for Shakespeare Globe, (Cambridge, 1983).
74
N. D. Shergold, “Le dessin de Comba et l'ancien théâtre espagnol,”
in Le lieu théâtral à la Renaissance, 2002, 259-272, (1rst ed.1964)
75
Lough, Paris Theatre Audiences, 65.
22
st
rue du Temple, the layout obeyed the
characteristics of a rectangular plan, and
according to a contract for refurbishment dated
April 29, 1631, the carpenter should provide:
trois portes au-devant du tripot, celle du milieu
pour le parterre, celles des deux côtés pour les
galeries, de bon bois et fermant à clef ;
une porte au-dessous du théâtre pour entrer et
sortir du logis du tripot, faite de bon bois et
76
fermant à clef.
This description allows one to perceive that there
was already a concern about the separation of
social classes in the “found space” of the jeux de
paume since commoners entered directly in the
parterre through a central door, while the
bourgeois and noblemen entered by two side
doors to ascend to the galleries, boxes and
amphitheatre. It is possible that nobles who
bought tickets for a seat on the stage entered the
lower floor through a different entrance, as there
were no stairs between the parterre and the
stage as observed by Holsboer77, although some
later conjectural drawings depict one central
narrow stair or two stairs on each side of the
stage.
In his analysis of Girault´s plans for refurbishing the
Hôtel de Bourgogne already in 1760, Golder
explains that by the time of the eighteenth century,
society was quite segregated based on social
strata and he interprets the entrances to the
different spaces of the theatre under this
hypothesis.78 However, this division of society in
the space of an old jeu de paume type was still
quite distant from the rigid social segregation
established by the Spanish corrales.
In spite of the complete absence of a previous
plan, I have classified the Spanish corrales within
the typology of the “rectangle”; the upper class
entered into the theatre through the adjacent
dwellings directly to their compartments so as not
76
See the contract de April 29, 1631 in Howe, Le Théâtre
profissionel, 86 (The full transcription of the document is in 259-
260). “three doors in front of the theatre, the middle one to enter
into the parterre and those on both sides for entering the galleries,
all in good wood and locking; another door will allow entering into
the lower floor of the building , made of good wood and locking”.
77
Holsboer states that there were no stairs to go up from the
parterre to the stage
78
See John Golder,“The Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1760: Some Previously
Unpublished Drawings by Louis-Alexandre Girault,” Journal for
Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 32 No. 4 (2009), 455-491.
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__THEATRE ARCHITECTURE FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE 21 CENTURY__

to encounter the commoners. Women of lower staircases to access the galleries and the lord´s
status sat in the Cazuela on the second floor and room.
entered by a separate staircase. The open
rectangular courtyard sometimes covered by an Different relations between actors and audience
awning, favoured fights in the parterre, mainly
In the long and narrow rectangular plan of some
led by musketeers and men of the lower classes.79
French playhouses, the viewer's relationship to the
The type of the corral, despite its pseudo-
stage was more questionable because of the long
democratic and rough appearance, already
distance, as well as the fact that the proscenium
foreshadowed the extreme social division that
arch of the stage gradually began to be adopted in
would characterize the proscenium arch theatre
the jeux de paume. Spectators who were in frontal
of the late seventeenth century, so well evaluated
boxes or in the bleachers (amphithéâtre) on the
by Jacques Rittaud Hutinet.80 Both the jeu de
third floor could hardly participate in the plays. In
paume and the corral types allowed some social
the corrales, which also followed the rectangular
segregation inside their spaces, but the existence
plan, with lengthening of the courtyard, viewers of
of private entrances to the aposentos for the
the cazuela and part of the rear galleries were
upper class made the Spanish corral yet more
somewhat isolated from the actors on stage.
segregated than the French jeu de paume.
Undoubtedly, spectators who sat on the stage
According to Marvin Carlson, at the end of the were able to hear well; however, they had only a
seventeenth century, in the matter of semiotics of partial view of the spectacle.
space, the concept of a theatrical space especially
Types adopted by the Elizabethan theatre, whether
designed for the “Prince” became a central
polygonal or square, providing they were public
organizing element for most European theatre
galleries that literally surrounded the thrust stage
auditoria for over two centuries.81 The
and lacked the proscenium arch, allowed for better
rectangular hall allowed greater emphasis on the
communion between actors and the audience. The
position perfectly in front intended for the
thrust stage surrounded by galleries on three sides,
“Prince”, with the best visibility, which, at the
made proximity between audience and actors
same time, allowed the audience to contemplate
possible. This meant that actors could not possibly
the sovereign. The position of the actors behind
ignore their viewers, and theatrical devices such as
the proscenium arch and the use of new
interpositions and monologues were an integral
perspective effects also decisively contributed to
part of the communication system. Since
privileging the space established for the nobles.
performances took place in broad daylight, the
In contrast, the polygonal plan enables better audience had to imagine scenes set at night, for
interaction among different classes of spectators, example, and respective information had to be
regardless of the fact that social status and conveyed rhetorically in the characters’ speeches.
wealth also determined the seating in Elizabethan The audience and the actors were in total
theatre. The rich people would watch from the communion. As Greenblatt points out: "the
galleries while ordinary people would stand in the Shakespeare theatre depends upon a felt
yard, but for some time, there were only two community: there is no dimming of lights, no
narrow front doors for the entrance of the whole attempt to isolate and awaken the sensibilities of
audience. The lords who chose to sit in their each individual member of the audience, no sense
exclusive seats on stage came to their seats of disappearance of the crowd."83 It is worthy of
through the tiring-house.82 The late note that the Elizabethan audience was more
amphitheatres would present two external concerned about hearing the spoken words than
being able to see the action. In the public outdoor
theatres, the most expensive seats were not the
79
In the small shops at the entrance, drinks called aloja - an ones with the best views (in fact the best view was
alcoholic beverage served to the people in the parterre. for those standing at ground level as they were
80
See Jacques Rittaud Hutinet. La vision d'un futur, Ledoux et ses
théâtres, (Lyon, 1982).
81
Carlson, Places of Performance, 1989.
82
Andrew Gurr. “Why was the Globe round?” in: Who hears in
Shakespeare? Auditory Worlds on Stage and Screen. Laury Magnus
83
and Walter Cannon, ed., (Lanham: 2012), 3-16, 6. Greenblatt, Shakespeare Negotiations, 1988, 5.

23

__THEATRE ARCHITECTURE FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE 21 CENTURY__
directly in front of the stage), but those that were
most easily seen by other audience members.84
Different relations of the playhouses within the
urban context
I have seen that the English public theatre of cubic
typology (Fortune, Red Lyon, etc.) and the
spherical-polygonal structures (Swan, Bear Garden,
Globe, Rose, Hope, etc.) were built in peripheral
neighbourhoods, a fact that did not prevent the
afternoon performances from being crowded. Each
playhouse could house from 1500 to 3000
spectators. Attendance declined only in the years
of the Black Plague (1593, 1603 and 1625). The
French jeux de paume were initially located in
areas near the ancient walls of Paris, therefore, out
of the city centre. There were more than twenty
adapted theatres in Paris, as was the case of the
Marais Theatre, which was readapted in a jeu de
paume in the middle of the marshland.
Nevertheless, by the mid-seventeenth century, the
old swampy district was occupied by the mansions
of aristocratic families.
Such was not the case of the corrales, which were
located inside residential dwellings in the very
centre of cities, as, for example, the Corral del
Principe, the Corral de la Cruz in Madrid, and the
Corral Cervantes in Alcalá de Henares.
Conclusion
In this research, I have studied the concept of ‘type’
not exclusively as groups of buildings or of the
individual characteristics that comprise them, but
rather as the relationship between the group and its
features. To grasp this concept means
understanding an essential sameness that may exist
between two or more completely original artefacts.
It should be the role of typology, as the study of
types, to investigate this phenomenon, as pointed
out by Quincy.85
Throughout the history of theatre architecture, the
three types of buildings were rarely just a space for
interaction between the actors and the audience,
but featured a wide variety of social and cultural
functions, such as bull or bear baiting or cock fight
pits in the London amphitheatres, or ballet or
mascarades or reversion to tennis courts in Paris.
84
Larque, A Lecture on Elizabethan Theatre, 2001.
85
Quatremère de Quincy, Encyclopedie Methodique,1825, 543.
24
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This reflects the complexity of establishing systems
of meaning between architecture, theatre and
society. Different pre-existing architectural shapes
were adopted as playhouses, use very unlike the use
conceived by the creators, with changes from inns
and arenas for animal fights into amphitheatres,
from tennis courts or jeux de paume into the French
theatre of the Pre-classic and Classic periods, and
from the courtyards inside dwellings to the Spanish
corrales. I recognize that these venues were “found
spaces” of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
century. They housed purposes other than the
performing arts before becoming a theatre.
Theatre history has confirmed the belief that within
Elizabethan theatre, the theatre of the Spanish
Golden Century and the French Baroque theatre
there is the conjunction of the same three elements:
a strong centralized power, a dramatic literature of
great quality, and physical similarities in spite of the
different types of architecture. In respect to the third
element, I observed that all types of playhouses
featured rows of galleries at different levels to seat
the upper classes, and a parterre (pit) or courtyard
to accommodate the commoners. In the three
types, the most sophisticated individuals enjoyed
watching the play while seated on stage. I found
also substantial similarity in the upper galleries over
the stage in the amphitheatres and in the corrales,
while documents about the French adaptation of
the jeux de paume prove that there was an upper
stage in the Hôtel de Bourgogne, as well as in the
Marais Theatre, used for discoveries and machine
effects. In addition, in the three types of playhouses,
regardless of their shapes, different spaces of the
venues had different ticket prices, determining at
least an economic segregation and stratification of
the audience.
At the end of the seventeenth century, social
practices foreshadowed the beginning of the use of
the playhouse not only as a space for performances,
but also as a place of public display, which
characterizes the proscenium arch theatre, drawn in
the principle of the “rectangle”. The abandonment
of the public polygonal amphitheatre, of the
rectangular adapted spaces of the jeux de paume,
and of the corrales - which provided the benefit of
greater intimacy between the audience and
performers – and the adoption of the proscenium
arch theatre denote a deeper change and an
increased stratification of society.