Surrounded though he was by corpses that "stunk mightily", Pepys retained his delight in drawing "a musique scale", smiling over a "nest of puppies", one of which had been promised to his wife, searching for an unshuttered tavern, and reading a new play, the playhouses being closed.
According to Julian Bird of the Society of London Theatre, playhouses are due to turn over more than £500m in 2011 for the third consecutive year.In this section A battalion of troubles Weapons of mass construction Rich pickings The battle of the bottle Red faces Checked out Impossible, indispensable France ReprintsGlobalisation is a big reason.
The Curtain was one of the earliest purpose-built playhouses, and is considered to be as important as the Theatre, the Globe and Blackfriars to Shakespearian scholars, explains Ms Mamujee.
By the time plays transfer from the subsidised sector to the commercial West End, they have often lost both their initial buzz and their lead actors, already booked to star in something else.That leaves the playhouses hoping to recover some glitz by casting well-known American actors in movie adaptations.
The Theatres Trust has a plan that would involve spending £250m (half provided by the taxpayer) over 15 years on sprucing up the West End's playhouses.
Since the theatres that, according to backstage whispers, are the focus of serious interest are all smallish playhouses rather than big theatres that tend to house musicals, it also prompts a question: is it now impossible to make money by putting on plays in the West End?"The West End has been written off before," says Peter Longman, director of The Theatres Trust.
In both nations, there were public as well as private playhouses, audiences of avid imagination, a developing language that invited its poetic expansion, a rapid growth of professional acting companies, and a simple but flexible stage.
After a lean period in the 1950s when it competed with television, repertory theatre (also known as regional theatre) found new life with the building of many fine civic playhouses, some equipped with additional studio theatres for experimental work.
Smaller playhouses also abounded to accommodate the growing number of plays.
The growth of playhouses in London was discouraged by the Licensing Act of 1737, which gave the lord chamberlain extensive powers to censor all plays and to uphold the monopoly of the two patent theatres in London.
