The following is taken from the beginning of a paper given at a Women and Indian Shakespeares Conference. The panel on which it was given was called ‘Rewriting Shakespeare’s Women in Practice’, and included in the line-up was Rani Drew, a playwright alluded to in the paper.
The London Clown, Saturday 13 April 2019 at the London Metropolitan Archives
Eva Griffith and others explored the donation of funny people to our landscape. Including funny-women in silent film and Anthrax the Clown!
29/8/2018 – #RedBullPlaque Day!
Over 100 people attended the unveiling of the plaque marking the site of the Red Bull Playhouse in Haywards Place, Islington.
2018: A Christopher Beeston Year
Guy Henry as Christopher Beeston in Dr. Griffith’s Red Bull Book Film
Dr. Griffith has designated 2018 a Christopher Beeston Year, as she ponders this actor, once a fellow with Shakespeare’s Chamberlain’s Men at the Curtain in Shoreditch. Instead of following this company to the Bankside Globe, Beeston joined Edward Somerset, fourth earl of Worcester’s company, later to be given patronage by Queen Anna of Denmark, James I’s wife.
Beeston became an actor-manager of the Queen’s Servants’ company while at the Red Bull in St. John Street, Clerkenwell. This was in 1612 after the death of Thomas Greene, the company clown.
It was as a Queen Anna’s man that Christopher became the first to engender a playhouse in Drury Lane – an indoor playhouse, different to the Bull – the Cockpit Phoenix playhouse. This theatre was the first entertainment venue, therefore, in what we now term ‘The West End’.
A Jacobean Company and Its Playhouse
Dr. Griffith’s book tells the previously untold story of the Servants of Queen Anna of Denmark, a group of players parallel to Shakespeare’s King’s Men, and their London playhouse, The Red Bull. Griffith sets the playhouse in the historical context of the Seckford and Bedingfeld families and their connections to the site.