FINDING THE THEATER WHERE ROMEO AND JULIET WAS FIRST STAGED.

FINDING THE THEATER WHERE ROMEO AND JULIET WAS FIRST STAGED. As this article by Maev Kennedy in the Guardian reports, the Museum of London Archaeology has announced that it has found the remains of one of the theaters where Shakespeare’s company performed. The Curtain Theater was built in 1577 and used by Shakespeare’s company while the Globe Theater was under construction for at least two years, beginning in 1597. The site is located south of the Thames, and, probably because it remained open space for centuries, the remains seem to be well preserved. It is thought that the Curtain Theater is where Henry V and Romeo and Juliet were first performed. This means that it was this theater and this “wooden O” that the Chorus was speaking of when he asks in the Prologue to Henry V:

“…can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?”

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