Keynote: Andrew Gurr: The Economics of the 1613 Decision

Something that Professor Cohen had impressed on us all going into this conference was that the Blackfriars itself wouldn't be here without Andy Gurr. Agree or disagree with his concept of a duopoly between The Chamberlain's Men and the Admiral's Men, I don't think there's anyone here that would argue that The Shakespearean Stage has been the cornerstone of Elizabethan scholarship for at least the last 40 years. Dr. Gurr's keynote this morning is, without a doubt, the highlight of this conference.

Ralph Alan Cohen introduces Gurr by pointing out that tomorrow is St. Crispin's Day, and that he was tempted to ask Dr. Gurr to read the speech from Henry V. Gurr, Cohen is confident, would have invariably said yes. It was Gurr's propensity for saying yes that was responsible for the reconstruction of The Globe, and and for the ASC Blackfriar's Theatre that we are all sitting in now.

After thanking Cohen and Mary Baldwin College for inviting him to the conference, Gurr begins by clarifying that he will not be talking about Sheakespeare's Trousers this morning (drat!), but rather the economics behind the decision to build the second Globe in 1613 (the second Globe would not be completed until 1614). For those who don't know, the original Globe theatre was built with a thatched roof to save money, and during a performance of Henrey VIII, the thatches caught fire, and the buildin burned down. The Globe was rebuilt at great cost, leading many to accuse the King's Men of making a poor economic decision out of a sense of sentimentality. The King' Men had a second, more profitable indoor playhouse, after all (the Blackfriars), and thus the decision to rebuild the Globe "was unnecessary."

"We know that at least two of the housekeepers declined to pay their share," so the decision to rebuild the Globe was not universal among the sharers. Shakespeare himself decided to opt out of taking part in the reconstruction of the Globe. Gurr puts forward that this was an emberassing time for Shakespeare as he had just bought a share in the Blackfriars gatehouse. We know from Shakespeare's will that he bequeathed no shares in either the Globe or the Blackfriars playhouses, and thus we can assume that he divested himself of his shares in the theatres. Gurr states that it is a reasonable assumption that it must have been when the sharers were being asked to put forward significant sums of money for the reconstruction of the Globe that Shakespeare walked away from the investment.

Why then, did the majority of the company members rebuild the Globe? Gurr points out that, by 1609, there had been a ban on all city inns, including the Bell and the Crosskeys (the former houses of the Queen's Men), for playing purposes, and thus the King's Men (and other playing companies) had to play a winter season in an outdoor theatre. Clearly this was an unfavorable circumstance, and had led to the securing of the Blackfriars.

Edward Alleyn's endowment of Dulwich College cost in the neighborhood of 10,000 pounds, "which was a phenomnal sum of money in Jacobean terms." Burbage, on the other hand, was used to thinking in much smaller economic terms, and yet he saw it necessary to raise the 1000 pounds necessary for the construction of the 1614 Globe.

Being a housekeeper was not the same as being a sharer in the company, and Gurr cites evidence of buildings adjacent to the original Globe that burned down in the fire that also had an economic value to the house sharers. Burbage, Hemmings, and Condel were all accommodating men, and formed a "leading group of the fellowship" to rebuild the Globe. Shakespeare was the only original housekeeper that opted not to rebuild the Globe, and Gurr attempts to explain his decision, "apart from his chronic penny pinching," in the context of Shakespeare's first joining of the Chamberlain's Men.

Gurr challenges the notion that Shakespeare primarily wanted to see his play published, and cites evidence of the variety of cuts and emendations made to the texts in print. "Retirement, dare I say" was a motivation for choosing not to reinvest in the new Globe. Gurr marks this as the moment where he marked his retirement from the London theatre scene, and notes that he probably viewed the Blackfriars Gatehouse as the only properly he needed in London. He paid 180 pounds out of pocket for it, and when a few weeks later Hemmings, Condel, Lowen, and Burbage came to him for money to rebuild the Globe, it must have seemed a painful request given the recent expenditure that he had recently incurred.

Hemmings, Condell, Burbage, and Lowen invested in the second Globe for reasons of continuity of their company, which Gurr says is more like a fellowship. There was something unique about this group of individuals, and they no doubt found something in working with each other that they were fairly certain they would not find with another company. "Hemmings, Burbage, and Condell were brought up in the populist tradition" as well, and saw an appeal to performing in a playhouse that was designed for a more inclusive audience. Leaving one playhouse empty for half of the year was an extravagance, and not explainable by economics alone.

There are signs of sentimentality in the choice to rebuild the Globe using the same materials as it was originally built with. When the Fortune burned down in 1621, it was rebuilt with brick, and building codes were beginning to form at the time that asked for more durable material construction. While they did replace the thatched roof of the first Globe with tiles the second time around (which was only natural as that was directly responsible for the fire), Gurr concludes that the decision to build the theatre in almost exactly the same fashion and in the same place as the first is further evidence of the sentimantality that must have been at play in the reconstruction.

The Blackfriars space is much smaller than the Globe, and thus there was a practical consideration for the reconstruction of the Globe. Gurr points out that the ASC Blackfriars is actually larger than Shakespeare because the stools on stage would have to be roughly 3' further on stage to account for the rapiers that every fashionable lord would have worn. There were also economic reasons for the Globe. In a summer season that Gurr cites, the Globe had an intake of 78 pounds, and the Blackfriars had an intake of 48 for its comparable winter season. Of course, the seats in the Blackfriars were more expensive, and had they played at the Blackfriars in the summer, their intake their would have been much higher; thus the economic reasons cannot alone justify the expense of building a second Globe.

We must conceive of the decision of the housekeepers to rebuild the Globe as a primarily sentimental one. "To rebuild the Globe was affirmation of an old tradition," "and perhaps we ourselves now should think about whether we want to ally ourselves with that sense of traditionalism" in getting the Globe in London to build its own Blackfriars Playhouse and getting the ASC to build its own Globe, concludes Gurr.

I, for one, didn't get into this business for the money, and have always felt that you don't invest in art for a monetary return. It's hard for me to close my eyes to the worst economy we've seen in 80 years, but if the Globe was "so old fashioned by 1613," and it didn't make good monetary sense to rebuild it, but the King's Men, 400 years ago, saw value in the continuity of rebuilding their original theatre, maybe we should have a little bit more confidence in our own cultural, and yes, emotional investment.

To conclude, Professor Cohen reminds us that there will be a series of conversations tomorrow morning which will investigate the ASC's process of constructing their own Globe Playhouse.

So there we have Andy Gurr's keynote, which was admittedly familiar to me from his writing, but it was exciting to hear it from the legend himself. We'll break for lunch now and be back after 2:15 with a report from paper session 10.