Eyewitness view

Eyewitness view
Image Date: 
ca. 1596
Image Type: 
Source: 

As translated in Karl Theodor Gaedertz, Zur Kenntnis der altenglischen Buhne nebst andern Beitragen

zur Shakespeare-Litteratur (Bremen, 1888), 6--7. 

Textual Description: 
'...Of all the theatres however the largest and most distinguished is the one whose sign is a swan (commonly, the Swan theatre), which, to be sure, accommodates three thousand people in seats. [It is] built of an accumulation of flint stones (of which in Britain there is a vast abundance) supported by wooden columns which on account of the colour of marble painted on them can deceive even the most acute, whose form at least since it seems to represent the general notion of Roman work I have drawn above.'