Living with a Playhouse

Abstract

This chapter considers why there were no formal complaints against the playhouse between 1596 and the next petition of 1619. It argues that the playhouse brought economic and social benefits to the area, and that over time theater people became a familiar part of the neighborhood. Even the godly learned to live in the shadow of a playhouse. For the Blackfriars clergy, maintaining neighborhood stability by accommodating the interests of different factions usually trumped a desire for ideological purity. The presence of a playhouse may even have served their polemical goals until material conditions dictated otherwise.