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Stages of Discovery: Key Players on the London Stage and the World Stage

Virginia and Theatre: Early Associations

In a sermon preached in London in 1610, William Crashaw, the Puritan preacher of the Inner and Middle Temples, offered this virulent warning...

As for Plaiers: (pardon me right Honourable and beloved, for wronging this place and your patience with so base a subject;) ... But this may suffice, that they are Players: they abuse Virginea, but they are but Players: they disgrace it: true, but they are but Players, and they have played with better things, and such as for which, if they speedily repent not, I dare say, vengeance waites for them. But let them play on: they make men laugh on earth, but hee that sits in heaven laughes them to scorne; ... because wee resolve to suffer no Idle persons in Virginea, which course if it were taken in England, they know they might turne to new occupations.  Thus the Divell, Papists, and Players, (the enemies of this action) single them asunder, or let them joyne their forces, wee care not ...

Crashaw saw Virginia as a place where culture might get a clean slate after decades of moral and religious corruption put forth by people he saw as "idle," "base," "enemies." Predominantly for Crashaw and people who shared his views, these were Catholics, actors, and others seen as sinful. Yet by 1610, colonization was well underway in Virginia, and Crashaw's vision of a utopian society in the New World was quickly fading. His vision for home was fading as well, as those hated "players" -- including William Shakespeare -- were taking the country by storm.



1608: seminal year

Two years earlier, in 1608, two seminal cultural events took place in England.

First, the King's Men, Shakespeare's theater company, won the nearly two decades-long battle for a playhouse at

Detail from Holler's 1647 panarama of London. The Blackfriars in on the far left.

Blackfriars, part of an abandoned monastery complex that once housed Parliament (where Henry VIII divorced Katherine of Aragon in state proceedings), a venue for a London boys' theater company, and which by 1608 held a variety of upscale apartments, offices and shops. Click here for further reading on the Blackfriars.

Second, King James formed the Virginia Company, a relatively small group of investor-administrators that organized the state-sanctioned colonization of the New World.  Click here for further reading on the Virginia Company.

The government of King James rallied behind each of these events in the years prior to 1608 for a variety of reasons, including:

-James was a Scottish King on an English throne.  James' ability to invest both in English plays and playing companies and in English investors and English colonies helped to secure his administration in its early years.

-Virginia was a potential mother lode for profit, so was the theatre.  With money made almost exclusively from acting, the noted actor Edward Alleyn founded Dulwich College, a preparatory school still in existence today.  With his fortunes as a playwright and actor, William Shakespeare was able to purchase a coat of arms (an expensive proposition that cemented his status as a gentleman) and one of the finest houses in his hometown, Stratford-Upon-Avon.  Meanwhile investors in the Virginia Company looked to the promise of new trade goods such as tobacco, tea, spices, and gold, as well as vast new lands holding the possibility of infinite wealth.

-James and members of the peerage personally supported both the well-being of theatre and the New World venture.  Shakespeare's company, the King's Men, was so because James was the patron of the company.  James was not only a fan of plays, but probably commissioned several plays to be written for state occasions, including Shakespeare's Macbeth.  At the same time, James was directly involved in the Virginia experiment.  His King's Council for Virginia was comprised of the brightest and most influential officials and experts in the country.  A successful Virginia company meant more than lucrative business growth; Virginia became a symbol for Britain's influence on the world stage.

This final matter is most significant because it is the most concrete.  The people helping to shape James' policy toward exploration and colonization were, in some notable cases, the very people shaping, funding and driving plays and the cultural life at court.  The world of theatre met the world of exploration.  We'll be looking more closely at the intersection between these two worlds as we examine the language, the plays, and the people behind two of the most lasting legacies of James' England: the phenomenal plays of William Shakespeare and his fellows and the world-changing discovery of the New World.

Worlds Collide

General connections between James' government and the theatre were unavoidable.  The King's Men and other companies played yearly at court before James, the royal family, and members of James' court and government.  There is little doubt that many of the more notable names included in the charters would have seen the plays of Shakespeare, Jonson, Fletcher and others on occasion during the play season at court or at the Blackfriars playhouse, including Queen Henrietta Maria.  Playgoing at Blackfriars was an extremely popular past-time for members of the peerage, as was seeing plays performed by the King's Men and other playing companies each Christmas time, when actors performed plays at court.  The peerage is what it sounds like - the "peer" group of the nobility.  Primarily, the peerage consisted of families of noble birth who possessed titles and property.  That Shakespeare and his fellows were involved with the peerage is noteworthy: Shakespeare and other playwrights were very popular and very well respected by the country's most powerful people.

The wealthy and noble members of the peerage were not the only people involved both in plays and in Virginia exploration.  London is a port city on the Thames River and ships sailing for Virginia may have called at London; certainly many of the sailors of the Sea Venture and other Virginia-bound ships were from London.  Shakespeare's company was used to these sailors attending their plays and would, in some cases, hire sailors to take supporting roles in plays.

The theatre world and the New World were interwoven at nearly every juncture and it is the people involved that will tell us the clearest story about the connection between the two worlds.

Examine the diagram below to see how the key players in both the Virginia Company and the King's Men and the world of the theatre interacted.  For more information on any of these key players, proceed to the "cast" bios - biographies of each person that can help you gain a sense about the culture and collision of exploration and art in the early 17th century.

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