Remembering the rose and its Kentish connection

"The Society has visited, as part of last summer's programme, the excellent sound and light presentation on the site of London's first Elizabethan Bankside theatre - The Rose. It was built in 1587, the year before the Armada sailed, some years earlier than the three other Southwark playhouses - The Globe, The Swan and The Bear Garden.

The presentation, which only opened this spring, recounts the huge importance of the archaeological discovery made in 1989 and now preserved under a protective layer of sand and concrete, itself covered with a pool of water. Above it has been constructed the office block whose foundation work revealed the lost site. This is the beginning of presenting the site publicly and the beginning of a great fund-raising campaign by the Rose Theatre Trust to enable a full-scale excavation to take place. For the 1989 excavation revealed a portion of the only Tudor playhouse to have been thoroughly investigated and it is the only site where eventually a complete excavation can take place.

Not only were Shakespeare's early plays performed on its stage, but Christopher Marlowe's masterpieces - Tamburlaine the Great, Dr Faustus and The Jew of Malta received their first performances there. The first was written when Marlowe was only 23; he was murdered at Deptford before he was 30. Marlowe, the son of an aspiring Canterbury craftsman, was one of the earliest of the city's children to benefit from Archbishop Cranmer's scholarships to the King's School and later to Corpus Christi, Cambridge. Cranmer firmly believed: 'Let the ploughman's son enter the room'. The events leading to Marlowe's untimely death took place in the original County of Kent, now the outer London boroughs - arrest at Scadbury in Chislehurst, trial within the royal precincts of Greenwich Palace, and death in an unsavory tavern in Deptford.

But The Rose keeps not only the memory of Marlowe's triumphs but has also access to the substantial amount of documentary evidence concerning the theatre's design and use. Its leading actor, Edward Alleyn, invested his wealth in land, including the manor of Dulwich situated in Surrey, very close to the Kent boundary. His aim was to fund his charity - the College of God's Gift. In the fullness of time, this became the modern Dulwich College and in the school's archive is preserved much of the theatre's history. For Edward Alleyn's stepfather-in-law was the Southwark entrepreneur Philip Henslowe who built The Rose.

The presentation, at 56 Park Street, Southwark, SE1 9AR, is open 7 days a week, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and is highly recommended to Society members.

Joy Saynor