At a few hundred yards' distance from the Blackfriars
Theatre, in the direction of Cannon Street, Shakespeare, too, shortly
before his death, purchased a house.
Thus Shakespeare's life in London is well identified with four
districts--with Bishopsgate, with Shoreditch, with Southwark, and with
Blackfriars. Unhappily for students of Shakespeare's life, London has
been more than once remodelled since the dramatist sojourned in the
city. The buildings and lodgings, with which he was associated in
Shoreditch, Southwark, Bishopsgate, or Blackfriars, have long since
disappeared.
It is not practicable to follow in London the same historical scheme
of commemoration which has been adopted at Stratford-on-Avon. It is
impossible to recall to existence the edifices in which Shakespeare
pursued his London career. Archaeology could do little in this
direction that was satisfactory. There would be an awkward incongruity
in introducing into the serried ranks of Shoreditch warehouses and
Southwark wharves an archaeological restoration of Elizabethan
playhouse or private residence. Pictorial representations of the Globe
Theatre survive, and it might be possible to construct something that
should materialise the extant drawings.
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