ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the history of the blind spot and outlines some of the key questions that will help to bring the Newington Butts Playhouse squarely back into focus. Neither history nor geography has been kind to the little playhouse that once stood on a plot south of St. George's Field, a little under a mile from London Bridge. Although it was among the earliest playhouses of the golden age of English theatre in the Elizabethan period, most histories of that age tend to disregard it altogether or at least give it only a cursory mention. If Collier's belligerence left the next generation of scholars reticent to delve further into these historical questions, the revelations in the 1850s and 1860s that many of his new discoveries were forgeries only served to complicate matters. The last hundred years has witnessed a flourishing industry for Shakespeare biographies.
