Vere Street Theatre

Gibbons' Tennis Court in Vere Street, Clare Market, was built by Charles Gibbons about 1634. It was the first tennis court in London to be converted to a permanent theatre. Thomas Killigrew (1612–83) opened the first Theatre Royal here to house his newly established King's Company. The building is shown on the following drawings/maps:

1657. A sketch reproduced in Records of the Honorable Society of Lincoln's Inn. The Black Books. volume 2 (London, 1897–1902), and in The Commonwealth and Restoration Stage, by Leslie Hotson (Harvard University Press, 1928), between pages 120 and 121.

1658. Richard Newcourt's map of London. Edward A. Langhans observes that

Gibbons' court is shown running roughly east and west rather than northeast-southwest, and Newcourt placed it in the block of buildings to the west rather than to the east of Duke Street; these I take to be errors, for I feel certain that the building shown is indeed Gibbons' court. Three stories are depicted, the top one containing the typical tennis court row of windows. The ground and second stories both have four windows, and on the ground floor is a door in the side of the court features which Hollar, curiously, did not show. The roof seems oddly flat and the third floor windows on the far side are pictured despite the impossibility of their being visible from this angle. Newcourt was clearly not much of an artist" ("The Vere Street and Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatres in Pictures," Educational Theatre Journal 20.2 (May, 1968): 177).

The building depicted in the Newcourt engraving, however, may instead be Gibbons' house with the tennis court beside it running northeast and southwest. In this engraving, Princes and Duke Streets are mistakenly situated to the east of Gibbons' house.

ca. 1660. Hollar's bird's-eye view of west-central London shows both Gibbons' and Lisle's tennis courts.

From 1663 to 1671 the building was a drama school; from 1675–82, it was used as a Nonconformist meeting house. Later it was a carpenter’s shop and a slaughterhouse and tripe-boiling house. It was destroyed by fire in 1809.

Gibbons's Tennis Court

Prig. Engag'd! no, Faith, let's make a Match at Tennis to Day. ... How will that Gentleman and you play with Stanmore, and I keep his back Hand, at Gibbons's!—Shadwell, A True Widow, Act I.

"The finest playhouse, I believe, that ever was in England." Such was Samuel Pepys's enthusiastic verdict upon his first visit to Killigrew's new Theatre Royal, formerly Gibbons's Tennis Court."⁷³ And yet the origin and early history of this famous theatre, the last of the Elizabethan order, have been wrapped in an unpenetrated obscurity. Some light, nevertheless, can now be thrown on them by the aid of records from Chancery Lane.

Tennis courts have had a long and intimate association with the drama. A tennis-court building, as the accompanying picture of Henry VIII's "court tennis" at Hampton Court will show, might without much pains be converted into a theatre. The large, unencumbered oblong hall, well lighted by a row of windows in the upper part of the side walls, made good raw material. By the middle of the seventeenth century it had become a common practice for players to hire tennis courts in which to set up their stages. George Jolly, the last great English stroller on the Continent, performed, as we shall see, "with all propriety and decency" in a tennis court in Cologne; and, at the Frankfort Fair, he put on his plays in the Ballhaus adjoining the Gasthof zum Krachbein. In France as well, during the classical period, most of the theatres were fitted up in converted jeux de paume."⁷⁴

Gibbons's Tennis Court had its beginning in the spring of 1633, thanks to the enterprise of a certain Charles Gibbons, who saw his opportunity to make money. The Earl of Clare owned a large piece of open ground in Clement's Inn Fields, which adjoined Lincoln's Inn Fields on the southwest. To borrow the words that Ned Ward makes use of in his London Spy, we may picture Gibbons as resolved to build on this spot a "Conveniency for the Noble Game of Tennis, a very Delightful Exercise, much used by Persons of Quality and ... attended with these extraordinary good Properties; it is very Healthful to him that plays at it, and is very Profitable to him that keeps it."⁷⁵ Opening negotiations with the earl for a lease, he applied at the same time to Charles I for a license to build. In both of these designs he was successful. On 10 May, 1633, Clare leased⁷⁶ to Charles Gibbons, "of St Clement Danes, gentleman," an irregular piece of land in Clement's Inn Fields, the description of which may be summarized thus: "adjoining to a ditch there between Louch his houses and certain other houses built in or near the place where the gunpowder house stood in Clement's Inn Fields," containing north and south on the northeast, 216 feet, and on the southwest, 240 feet; and in breadth east and west, on the north (next the new buildings where the gunpowder house stood) 190 feet, and south (toward Louch's buildings) 120 feet. This plot is included in the small block subsequently bounded (see Strype) on the north by Duke (later Sardinia) Street, west by Vere Street, south by Sheffield Street, which separated it from Louch's buildings, and east by the St. Clement's parish line behind Arch Row in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Gibbons was to have "free ingress from Clement's Inn Fields, both on horseback and on foot, with Carts and Carriages," and his lease was to run for thirty-one years, beginning 25 March, 1633. Rent was fixed at £10 a year, and Gibbons paid £140 fine on receiving the lease.⁷⁷ Royal license under the Privy Seal was granted to him and his assigns on 11 May, 1633, to

make, frame, erect, build, and set up ... in and upon the field called Clement's Inn Field, in and upon his and their own lands ... two Tennis Courts, the one covered, the other uncovered, with a house at each end for his and their private habitation to attend that service; and the same to increase [read enclose] with such walls and other fences as he or they should think best.⁷⁸

As a further encouragement to his undertaking, Gibbons obtained from Lord Haughton (the earl's heir) a written promise that, on coming into the property, he would extent the 31-year lease by ten years.⁷⁹ But since he had far from enough capital to carry the project through. Gibbons borrowed £800 of his wife's stepfather, John Poole, and as security set over the lease to him 21 July, 1634. On the strength of this loan he built "one fair capital messuage and a tennis court, and other buildings"—among which was a bowling alley—at a cost of more than £1200. His license, it will be recalled, allowed him to build two courts; but for the moment his funds were sufficient only for one.

Tennis and bowls were not the sole attractions of the establishment. Gibbons was clever enough to provide a sumptuous table and French cuisine, thus winning for his house the most elegant patronage. We hear of the French cook of "Mr. Gibbons, who keepeth the Tennis Court in the fields, unto whose house many noblemen resort, and there eat."⁸⁰ To one Christopher Sorrell, a butcher, Gibbons let one of the houses he had built; and "bought Cates of him: as Beef, mutton. Lamb, and Veal."⁸¹

Clients flocked to him so plentifully that by the summer of 1636 Gibbons felt the need of adding a second tennis court. No doubt London's unsatisfactory weather led him to abandon the project of an uncovered court and to petition the King to be allowed to erect, instead, another roofed building for the pastime. His special license,⁸² procured from the King by Henry Rich, Earl of Holland, on 4 August, 1636, quotes the petition showing "that he hath built, the said covered Court with a house at the end thereof; but, for the open Court, he finding that it will be of little use and not worth his charge, therefore he hath forborne to build the same." The new patent authorized him to set up (instead of the open court) "upon his own ground near adjoining to his house aforesaid between the said East end of Princes [that is, Duke] street and Louch's buildings aforesaid, in and upon the said field of Clement's Inn, one other covered Tennis Court, with rooms at each end thereof fit for the nobility's and gentry's accommodation." Some years elapsed, it will be seen, before Gibbons attempted to make use of the permission so obtained. Meanwhile, ownership changed hands. On 18 March, 1636/7, Gibbons and his wife's stepfather, Poole, sold their lease for £1300 to Sir Matthew Mennes, K.B., and four days later Mennes redemised the property to Gibbons for a term of twenty-seven years under a rent of £160 a year. On the latter date. Gibbons also entered into a recognizance or bond of £2100 to Sir Matthew.⁸³

In and after 1647 the property was in litigation;⁸⁴ but, since the outcome did not shake Gibbons in his tenure, we need not go into the particulars here. It may be added, however, that, further to pleasure his patrons, in 1639 Gibbons planned to build coach-houses near his tennis courts.⁸⁵ About this time, too. Gibbons received a grant of a coat of arms; for he is entered as "Carolus Gibbons, Armiger," in the entry books of statutes staple.⁸⁶

Sport and good eating were cut short by the outbreak of the Civil War; and our next mention of Gibbons's establishment is after an interval of eleven years—in March, 1653. This is the unique record, already cited,*⁸⁷ of a raid by the soldiery on a performance "at one Mr. Gibbions his Tennis Court'" of Claracilia, a tragi-comedy by Tom Killigrew. We shall see that in 1660 the author of this play was to choose Gibbons's Tennis Court as the first Theatre Royal to house his newly created King's company.

But in 1653 plays were not yet by any means the chief entertainment at Gibbons's. The troublous times being past, tennis, bowls, and dinners once more attracted fashionable throngs. Prosperity increased, and in the autumn of 1654 our arbiter sphaeristerii busily set about putting into effect his license to build another covered court. We learn of this activity through the opposition it stirred up in the breast of one of his neighbors, who protested to Oliver Cromwell in the following terms:

To his Highness The Lord Protector
and his Council.
The humble petition of John Tilson, gent., on
the behalf of himself and divers others

Showeth unto your Highness, That one Charles Gibbons, a tennis court keeper near Lincoln's Inn Fields, who quietly enjoyeth his house and tennis court, to his best advantage (though thereby sometimes, by entertaining company at unseasonable hours, he giveth much offense to many): yet notwithstanding, the said Gibbons is now erecting one other house and tennis court adjoining to the same place, to the further disturbance of his neighbors, and ill example of others in this time of reformation; whereas formerly no person was known to undertake any such building without special authority.

He goes on to beseech Cromwell "to prohibit the building of the aforesaid new house and tennis court, which will be to the great quiet of the neighborhood and encouragement of many well-affected persons."⁸⁸ What action Cromwell took we do not know. Yet it is certain that Gibbons, whether hindered by prohibition or by lack of funds, never completed his second court.

Davenant, as will appear from a discovery in the chapter on his Opera, made use of Gibbons's court for sumptuous performances In the early months of 1656. When therefore Killigrew in 1660 chose the court for a playhouse, he was taking advantage of an establishment which had been a fashionable centre of delightful exercise and entertainment of various kinds for a quarter of a century, and one which had already sheltered plays and players more than once. Certainly it is clear that such a house was far better fitted for the King's company than was the large, noisy, old, and open-air Red Bull, from which Killigrew and his players came to Gibbons's. No view of this playhouse, the last of the Elizabethan kind, has been known until now, except the accompanying picturesque representation of its blackened ruins in 1809, after a destructive fire.⁸⁹ The print is accompanied by a plan, which indicates the inner dimensions of the court as some 23 by 64 feet. Such a size is very small for a playhouse and makes me doubt the accuracy of the scale. Interesting as this view is, it dates from an epoch more than a century after the house had been abandoned by the players. Thanks to my new information, I am able to identify two hitherto unrecognized contemporary views of Gibbons's. I find the first included in a curious plan of Lincoln's Inn Fields drawn on the back of a deed executed just prior to 10 November, 1657.⁹⁰ Gibbons's Tennis Court is shown in the lower left-hand corner, between the end of "Princes Streete" and "Lowches Howses." The artist has pictured three upper windows on the northern end of the building. This representation is, however, considerably less interesting than the bird's-eye view by Hollar, already mentioned.⁹¹ Here we can recognize Gibbons's almost in the centre of the irregular block which occupies most of the left-hand portion of the plate, with its long roof approximately on a line with the file of soldiers in the Fields. The form as a tennis court is obvious, and the row of windows is plainly discernible. Since Gibbons's license allowed him to build a house at the end of the court, we may conclude that his dwelling is the house at the southern end of the tennis court, fronting south on Vere Street. The low buildings on the right at the upper end of the court probably represent the coach-houses mentioned above.

Gibbons's Tennis Court has been described in a variety of ways, first as being "in Lincoln's Inn Fields," a loose description, which obviously arose from its proximity to the Fields, and from the fact that the yard (later called Bear Yard⁹²) in which the court stood had from earliest times an entrance from Lincoln's Inn Fields. By others it has been put "in Vere Street," which is more correct, since the main entrance was probably from this side. To say that it was "in Clare Market" is inexact but allusive, as Vere Street ran into Clare (or New) Market on the southeast. "Vere Street" is, I think, the most accurate designation.

To-day all trace is gone of this famous tennis court, which housed the first Theatre Royal. But Thalia has not lost her hold over the minds of Londoners in this neighborhood. On the site of Gibbons's arose the London Opera House, now converted into the Stoll Picture Theatre.

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73. 20 Nov., 1660.
74. Lawrence, The Elizabethan Playhouse (Second Ser.), p. 141.
75. The London Spy, (Casanova Society), p. 196.
76. No. 2.
77. Common Pleas, 25/457.
78. Patent Roll, 2740/10.
79. No. 3.
80. S.P. Dom., Chas. I, cccxii, 22 (23 Jan., 1635/6). Cf. Julian Marshall's Annals of Tennis, p. 81.
81. C5 486/50.
82. Patent Roll, 2740/10.
83. L.C. 4/202, p. 6.
84. No. 3.
85. C.S.P. Dom., Chas. I, 1638–39, p. 551. Mar. 10, Docquet.
86. L.C. 4, 19 Chas. I, 13 July. Joseph Haslewood says that he is down in the parish books of St. Clement Danes as "Charles Gibbons, esq." "Eu. Hood," in The Gentleman's Magazine (1813), Ixxxiii, pt. 2, p. 233.
87. See above, pp. 49–50.
88. S.P. Dom., Interregnum, Ixxvi, 56.
89. Wilkinson's Londina Illustrata, vol. ii.
90. The Black Books of Lincoln's Inn, (ed. W. P. Baildon, 1898), ii, frontispiece. Cf. ibid., p. 418 and note.
91. See above, p. 91, and compare the plate facing p. 128.
92. "On the East side [of Vere Street] is a passage into Bear Yard, which is a broad Place with Shambles and Stalls built, as designed for a Market Place to join to Clare Market, but the Project did not take; so of no Use, and but ordinarily inhabited. Out of this Yard is an Alley which leadeth into Lincolns Inn Fields against Portugal Row." Strype's Stow (1720), ii, 119a.

Gibbons's Tennis Court, Vere Street, Clare Market, so called after Charles Gibbons, its owner or keeper (d. 1668), was opened as a theatre by the King's company under Killigrew, Thursday, November 8, 1660, with the play of King Henry IV. On April 8, 1663, the same company removed to a new house erected on the site of the present Drury Lane Theatre.¹

Prig. Engag'd! No, faith, let's make a match at tennis to-day; I was invited to dine by two or three Lords; but if you will let me have pen, ink, and paper, I'll send my dispatches, and dis-engage myself. How will that gentleman and you play with Stanmore, and I keep his back hand, at Gibbons's!—A True Widow, by T. Shadwell, 4to, 1679.

The scattered remnant of several of these houses, upon King Charles's Restoration, fram'd a company, who acted again at the [Red] Bull [in St. John's Street], and built them a new [?] house in Gibbons's Tennis Court, in Clare Market, in which two places they continued acting all 1660, 1661, 1662, and part of 1663.—Downes's Rosc, Angl., ed. 1708, p. 1.

November 20, 1660.—To the new play-house near Lincoln's Inn Fields [which was formerly Gibbons's tennis-court], where the play of Beggar's Bush was newly begun; and so we went in and saw it well acted; and here I saw the first time one Moone [Mohun²], who is said to be the best actor in the world, lately come over with the King; and, indeed, it is the finest play-house, I believe, that ever was in England.—Pepys.

January 3, 1660–1661.—To the Theatre [in Gibbons's Tennis Court], where was acted Beggar's Bush, it being very well done; and here the first time that ever I saw women come upon the stage.—Ibid.

The remains of this little Theatre, which, from their obscure situation, had long been unnoticed, were accidentally discovered after a fire, which happened September 17, 1809, and which left nothing but a portion of the bare walls. The inside, in the various transformations it had undergone, had been stripped many years before, and retained but little to remind us of its former destination; for some time it had been respectively devoted to the purposes of a carpenter's shop, and to boiling the provisions of a neighbouring dealer in tripe.—Wilkinson's Londina llustrata (where there is a plate of the ruins.)

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¹ Malone's Shakespeare by Boswell, vol. iii pp. 129, 274.

² The theatrical reader will not be displeased to see the names of the principal actors in Gibbons's Tennis Court in the order in which they were rated in the poor-books in St. Clement's Danes for 1663, and in the rank in which they were no doubt held either for their shares or standing in the company:—Theophilus Bird, Michael Mohun, Charles Hart, Robert Shatterel, William Cartwright, William Wintershall, Nicholas Burt, Walter Clun, John Allington, John Lacy.