ABSTRACT
In 1587, in a move which was both risky and significant, Philip Henslowe, speculator and entrepreneur, opened a theatre on the south bank of the Thames. The theatre held approximately five hundred people in its yard and probably eleven hundred in its galleries. ‘Plucking a rose’ was a euphemism for urinating, and next to the theatre was the Little Rose, a notorious brothel operated by Henslowe himself. The year the Rose opened marks perhaps the beginning of the transition from a theatre organised around touring to one which was building-based. The feeling of a new beginning was reinforced by the decision of Francis Langley, a goldsmith and well-known speculator, to build a new theatre on the Bankside. The Swan is the only Elizabethan theatre of which there is a picture, albeit a rather skimpy sketch which has caused more disagreement than almost any other contemporary theatre document.
