The Rose and the Bear Gardens: Bankside's First Playhouse
Why is it significant?
At the bottom of Bear Gardens, turn left into Park Street and find the doorway of the Rose Playhouse, tucked into the base of a modern office block. Inside, in a dark basement, a line of red lights traces the outline of a small, many-sided theatre on the ground below.
Key Facts
| Place | The Rose and the Bear Gardens: Bankside's First Playhouse |
|---|---|
| Address | 56 Park Street, London SE1 9AR, United Kingdom |
| Geo Coordinates | 51.50720, -0.09530 |
| Part of Walk | Shakespeare's Southwark: Bankside, the Globe and Tate Modern in London |
| Generated | Generated |
At the bottom of Bear Gardens, turn left into Park Street and find the doorway of the Rose Playhouse, tucked into the base of a modern office block. Inside, in a dark basement, a line of red lights traces the outline of a small, many-sided theatre on the ground below. These are the remains of the Rose, built in 1587, the first playhouse on Bankside.
The Rose was the venture of Philip Henslowe, a businessman with a finger in everything from property to pawnbroking, whose account book, known as his diary, survives at Dulwich College. It is one of the most precious documents of English theatre: takings, loans to writers, costumes bought and sold. On this small stage the star actor Edward Alleyn thundered through Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine and Doctor Faustus, and the diary records a Henry VI play and Titus Andronicus, usually taken to be early work by a young writer from Stratford.
The remains were found in 1989, when a developer dug the foundations of an office block. Actors including Peggy Ashcroft, Ian McKellen and Dustin Hoffman joined the crowds who came to protest, and the building went ahead, redesigned to stand over the site instead of destroying it. In the old yard, archaeologists found the ground littered with nutshells and fruit pips, the snacks of an Elizabethan audience.
The lane you came down remembers the other show in town. Around here stood the bear-baiting rings, where chained bears were set upon by dogs while the crowd bet on the outcome. Queen Elizabeth herself enjoyed the sport, and the bear-pits competed for the very same pennies as the playhouses; Henslowe and Alleyn ended up running the bears as well. A famous stage direction in The Winter's Tale reads Exit, pursued by a bear... and some scholars have wondered whether a real one ever lumbered on.
Henslowe's toughest rival soon appeared just around the corner. In 1599 Shakespeare's company built a bigger, newer playhouse a stone's throw to the east, and within a few years the Rose was losing its audiences; Henslowe and Alleyn moved their players north of the river. Walk on east along Park Street and cross Southwark Bridge Road. The ground on the far side is where the Globe really stood.