But, after much controversy, the
battle was finally won by the supporters of the play, and The Theatre
was launched on a prosperous career. Two or three other theatres
quickly sprang up in neighbouring parts of London's environment. When
Shakespeare was reaching the zenith of his career, the centre of
theatrical life was transferred from Shoreditch to the Southwark bank
of the river Thames, at the south side of London Bridge, which lay
outside the city's boundaries, but was easy of access to residents
within them. It was at the Globe Theatre on Bankside, which was
reached by bridge or by boat from the city-side of the river, that
Shakespearean drama won its most glorious triumphs.
VI
Despite the gloomy warnings of the preachers, the new London theatres
had for the average Elizabethan all the fascination that a new toy has
for a child. The average Elizabethan repudiated the jeremiads of the
ultra-pious, and instantaneously became an enthusiastic playgoer.
During the last year of the sixteenth century, an intelligent visitor
to London, Thomas Platter, a native of Basle, whose journal has
recently been discovered,[6] described with ingenuous sympathy the
delight which the populace displayed in the new playhouses.
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