The Theatres of Inigo Jones and John Webb

The English stage of Shakespeare’s day was a place superbly fitted for the rhetorical drama of the times; by the Restoration it had been replaced by a kind of playhouse better suited to the ‘Scenes and Machines’ which dealt in spectacles. The seventeenth century was therefore a crucial one in the history of the stage, yet concrete evidence of the playhouses constructed during this time has been scarce and elusive. The best of it lies in the drawing which Inigo Jones, Surveyor of the King’s Works, and his pupil, John Webb, made for a succession of playhouses and Court theatres. Jones was responsible for the visual aspects of the masques performed at the various royal palaces, and both he and Webb designed a number of regular theatres at Court. In this 1985 book, the author establishes Jones and Webb as the most effective London theatre builders and scene designers of the seventeenth century.