Page "English Renaissance theatre" Paragraph 6

A different model was developed with the Blackfriars Theatre, which came into regular use on a long-term basis in 1599.

The Blackfriars was small in comparison to the earlier theatres and roofed rather than open to the sky ; it resembled a modern theatre in ways that its predecessors did not.

Other small enclosed theatres followed, notably the Whitefriars ( 1608 ) and the Cockpit ( 1617 ).

With the building of the Salisbury Court Theatre in 1629 near the site of the defunct Whitefriars, the London audience had six theatres to choose from: three surviving large open-air " public " theatres, the Globe, the Fortune, and the Red Bull, and three smaller enclosed " private " theatres, the Blackfriars, the Cockpit, and the Salisbury Court.

Audiences of the 1630s benefited from a half-century of vigorous dramaturgical development ; the plays of Marlowe and Shakespeare and their contemporaries were still being performed on a regular basis ( mostly at the public theatres ), while the newest works of the newest playwrights were abundant as well ( mainly at the private theatres ).