Part of
‘Walking the City’ TCCE Annual Walking Weekend 2016

Walk Guide: Lois Potter (Visiting Lecturer, King’s College London)

Duration: about 90 minutes

This area, though totally un-picturesque, is haunted by the early modern actors and dramatists who lived or worked there – for instance, Greene, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Burbage, and Webster. Until the Lord Chamberlain’s Men took the timbers of The Theatre across the Thames and re-erected it as The Globe, this and the nearby Curtain were their main performance venues.

We shall visit their sites and participants who wish will have the opportunity to read , or perform with Lois and/or other participants, scenes that would have been performed in these two theatres (texts will be distributed).

Anyone who has a specific passage in mind (from a play performed at the Theatre and /or Curtain in the 1590s) is welcome to bring a copy.  

This walk starts and ends at Old Street station.
(exit 1, with signs to Hoxton and Shoreditch-  inside at bottom of stairs)

Comfortable shoes are recommended.
Participants will need to take care when walking, as Shoreditch is normally full of pedestrians, construction, and road works.  

Image Credit: Detail from ‘The View of the Cittye of London from the North towards the Sowth’ from Abraham Booth’s manuscript journal of 1628-29 showing possible view of the Curtain (with the flag flying high!)