Curtain Theatre

Curtain Theatre

The Curtain Theatre was an Elizabethan playhouse located in Curtain Close, Shoreditch (part of the modern London Borough of Hackney), just outside the City of London. It opened in 1577, and continued staging plays until 1622.

The Curtain was built some 200 yards south of London's first playhouse, The Theatre, which had opened a year before, in 1576. It was called the "Curtain" because it was located near a plot of land called Curtain Close, not because it had the sort of front curtain associated with modern theatres. Elizabethan theatres had small curtained enclosures at the back of their stages; but the large front-curtained Proscenium stage did not appear in England until after the Restoration.