The Swan (theatre)

The Swan was a theatre in Southwark, London, England, built in 1595 on top of a previously standing structure, during the first half of William Shakespeare's career. It was the fifth in the series of large public playhouses of London, after James Burbage's The Theatre (1576) and Curtain (1577), the Newington Butts Theatre (between 1575 and 1577) and Philip Henslowe's Rose (1587–88).

The Swan Theatre was located in the Manor of Paris Gardens, on the west end of the Bankside district of Southwark, across the River Thames from the City of London. It was at the northeast corner of the Paris Garden estate nearest to London Bridge that Francis Langley had purchased in May 1589, four hundred and twenty-six feet from the river's edge. Playgoers could arrive also by water landing at The Paris Garden Stairs or The Falcon Stairs, both short walking distances from the theatre. The structure originally belonged to the Monastery of Bermondsey. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, it became royal property and passed through several hands before being sold to Langley for £850. The Mayor of London opposed Langley's permit to open a theatre, but his protests held no ground as the property had formerly belonged to the crown and the Mayor had no jurisdiction.

Langley had the theatre built almost certainly in 1595–96. When it was new, the Swan was the most visually impressive of the existing London theatres. Johannes De Witt, a Dutchman who visited London around 1596, left a description of the Swan in a manuscript titled Observationes Londiniensis, now lost. Translated from the Latin, his description identifies the Swan as the "finest and biggest of the London amphitheatres", with a capacity for 3000 spectators. It was built of flint concrete, and its wooden supporting columns were so cleverly painted that "they would deceive the most acute observer into thinking that they were marble", giving the Swan a "Roman" appearance. (De Witt also drew a sketch of the theatre. The original is lost, but a copy by Arendt van Buchell survives, and is the only sketch of an Elizabethan playhouse known to exist. If the Lord Chamberlain's Men acted at the Swan in the summer of 1596—which is possible, though far from certain—they would be the actors shown in the Swan sketch.) When Henslowe built the new Hope Theatre in 1613, he had his carpenter copy the Swan, rather than his own original theatre, the Rose, which must have appeared dated and out of style in comparison.

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