The Beginnings of the Connection: Ownership
The sixteenth century saw the arrival of commercial theatres, such as the Cross Keys in Gracechurch Street in1552 and the Bell in 1560. These inn-playhouses gave way to the regular performances in the yards of inns, which prompted the Common Council to decree in 1574 that no inn or tavern keeper should stage such shows. However, the effort to curb popular pleasures was unsuccessful, which led to the 1580 Privy Council order for the destruction of “playing and dicing houses within the Liberties.”[19] The subsequent movement of many playhouses from the city to Southwark, across the Thames, sparked the lasting association of theaters and brothels.

A typical inn-yard performance. [4]

Not only was the proximity of these sites the same, but often the most notable patrons of the theaters were also whoremasters. Philip Henslowe, the “best-known impresario of Elizabethan theatre” and his son-in-law, actor Edward Alleyn, were both brothel owners, who together managed the Rose theatre, which garnered its name from “The Little Rose,” a Southwark inn which Henslowe had acquired in 1584. This inn was also one of the original Bankside stewes that had been licensed by Henry II in 1161. Henslowe, a joiner who married rich, bought many of the Bankside brothels, reasoning that “when playhouses are closed the stews flourish.”[20]

Alleyn, the son of an innkeeper of Gray’s Inn Road, married Henslowe’s stepdaughter Joan Woodward in 1592 – a union that meant the family’s brothel investments would ultimately be consolidated. Joan was even treated as a common whore, evidenced by her “carting”, a common punishment for bawds. In a letter, Alleyn wrote to Joan that he was sorry she had been “by my lord mayor’s officer made to ride in a cart.” [20] When Joan died in 1623, Alleyn married the daughter of John Donne; part of the marriage settlement was the transfer of brothels the Bell, the Barge, and the Cock to Alleyn’s new wife. Upon her death, the revenues went to charities. In Alleyn, who became a churchwarden of St. Saviour’s in Southwark parceled out part of his brothels’ revenues to the other churchwardens to distribute, thus “sanitizing the wages of sin.”[20]

[Next]