Name of the first professional Elizabethan playhouse?

Answer 1

It was not the Globe Theater which was built in 1599 by which time Shakespeare had already been writing plays for over six years. The problem is that Shakespeare wrote his earliest plays before he joined the Burbage company so it is difficult to tell where those early companies, Lord Derby's, Lord Pembroke's and so on, performed them. There is some evidence that Henslowe's company performed them at the Rose, but they were also possibly played at the Theatre, the Curtain, Newington Butts, or the innyard theatres of the Bel Savage, the Bull, the Bell, and the Crossed Keys.

Where did Shakespeare first act? Any of the above, most probably at an innyard theatre.

Answer 2

The first building built in Elizabethan England expressly for use as a theatre was called the Red Lion and was built in 1567. It was a failure.

Nine years later a successful (and much better known) structure was built to house a permanent reperatory company. It was called The Theatre. In those days such buildings were called "playhouses", but over time the specific name became general by the process that trademark agents are terrified of.

Answer 3

The first theatres were in ancient Greece where they were called "amphitheatres". They did not name particular amphitheatres in those days.

Answer 4

James Burbage built a playhouse based on the structure of the inn-yard playhouses, calling it The Theatre, the first known use of that term for an English playhouse.

Answer 5

Shoreditch in 1576.