Inn-yard theatre

In the historical era of English Renaissance drama, an Inn-yard theatre or Inn-theatre was a common inn with an inner courtyard with balconies that provided a venue for the presentation of stage plays.

The Elizabethan era is appropriately famous for the construction of the earliest permanent professional playhouses in Britain, starting with James Burbage's The Theatre in 1576 and continuing through the Curtain (1577), the Rose, Swan, Globe and others —; a development that allowed the evolution of the drama of Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and their contemporaries and successors. Prior to the building of The Theatre, plays were sometimes staged in public halls, the private houses of aristocrats, or royal palaces —; but most often, and most publicly, they were acted in the courtyards of inns. (It is an often-stated truism of the critical literature that the open-air public theatres or amphitheatres of Burbage and his successors were modeled on the inn yards, with their surrounding balconies, open space in the center, and stage to one side.) Though the surviving documentary record is frustratingly limited, "it seems certain that some of the inn-yards were converted into something like permanent theatres." These venues did not cease operation once the first purposely-built theatres appeared in 1576–77; to the contrary, they remained in use and constituted an important aspect of Elizabethan drama.

The available evidence indicates that six London inns were significant sites for drama during the second half of the sixteenth century. The following list gives their locations and dates of earliest evidence as inn-theatres.

John Florio's English-Italian phrase book First Fruits (1578) refers to plays being staged at the Bull Inn.Richard Tarlton saw the famous performing horse "Marocco" at the Cross Keys Inn sometime before his death in 1588. In November 1589 the Lord Mayor of London ordered Lord Strange's Men not to perform in the city —; and they promptly showed their defiance by acting at the Cross Keys that afternoon. There were at least six inns and taverns in London in this era that employed the sign of the Boar's Head, which caused scholars significant confusion before the matter was clarified by C. J. Sisson.John Brayne, who was involved in both the Red Lion project and Burbage's Theatre in Shoreditch, attempted to convert the George Inn in Whitechapel into a theatre in 1580, but was unsuccessful.

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