The oldest working theatre in the UK, St George’s Guildhall in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, has recently discovered a stage that it believes William Shakespeare would have performed on. During renovations, floorboards dating back to the 15th century were found under the existing auditorium, which had been covered up for 75 years after a replacement floor was installed in the theatre. The theatre claims documents show that Shakespeare acted at the venue in 1592 or 1593, and that the borough paid Shakespeare’s company to come and play there. The Earl of Pembroke’s Men visited King’s Lynn, thought to include Shakespeare, when theatres in London were closed due to the plague.
Expert in historical buildings, Dr Jonathan Clark, was brought on board to research the venue and used a combination of tree-ring dating and a survey of how the building was assembled to date the floor to between 1417 and 1430 when the Guildhall was originally built. The floorboards trodden by Shakespeare are believed to be each 12 inches long and 6 inches deep, just a couple of inches below the modern floor.
It’s the only upper floor, which is in something of its original state where Shakespeare could have walked and performed according to Dr Clark. Tiffany Stern, professor of Shakespeare and early modern drama at the University of Birmingham, suggests that “the evidence he was there has to be patched together but is quite strong”. Shakespeare’s comedian Robert Armin was born just one street away, while a Norfolk writer called Robert Greene famously described the Bard as an “upstart crow” in what was essentially a bad review in 1592.
The theatre halls in London often failed to open due to the hazards of the plague at the time, leading to the Earl of Pembroke’s Men, thought to include Shakespeare, showing up in King’s Lynn. The recent discovery of the floorboards on which Shakespeare could have performed provides a crucial insight into the theatrical history of the time, according to Michael Dobson, director of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. The uncovering of the boards trodden by Shakespeare’s troupe should be far more significant to archaeologists of the Elizabethan theatre than is the replica of the Globe theatre erected near the real, long-demolished Globe’s foundations in central London in the 1990s, Dobson says
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