There was a place in Tudor London where the city’s rules didn’t apply. Where the Church, the law, and respectable society all looked the other way. And it was precisely this place — this patch of muddy ground south of the Thames — that gave the world something extraordinary: theatre as we know it.
Southwark was London’s shadow. And for William Shakespeare, it was exactly where he needed to be.
Outside the City Walls — and Outside Its Rules
The City of London had walls. And those walls had power. Inside them, the Lord Mayor controlled what could be built, what could be sold, and — crucially — what could be performed.
The City fathers did not like theatre. They thought it attracted idle people, spread disease, and encouraged disorder. So they banned it. No permanent theatres within the city walls. Full stop.
But Southwark sat on the other side of the Thames. It was technically in the county of Surrey, not under the City’s jurisdiction. The Lord Mayor had no power there. And so, on the south bank of the river, a very different kind of London grew up.
Bear-baiting pits. Brothels licensed by the Bishop of Winchester. Inns that never closed. And eventually — theatres. The Elizabethans came to Southwark not despite its roughness, but because of it. It was the one place in London where you could do exactly as you pleased.
The Bishop’s Bankside — a Strange Kind of Freedom
Here is one of history’s stranger ironies. Much of Southwark was owned by the Bishop of Winchester. That same bishop also held licences for the local brothels. The women who worked them became known, with grim humour, as “Winchester Geese.”
The Clink Prison stood in this same neighbourhood — giving the English language one of its most enduring slang terms for jail. It was used to lock up debtors, heretics, and anyone who fell foul of the bishop’s authority.
All of this — the prisons, the brothels, the bear gardens — sat alongside the churches and the taverns, cheek by jowl. Southwark didn’t pretend to be respectable. That, oddly, made it free. And freedom was exactly what the theatre needed to survive.
If you’re planning a trip to London and want to understand the city beyond its tourist surface, start with our London planning guide — it covers how to organise your time so you don’t miss the layers of history beneath your feet.
The Globe and the Birth of Modern Drama
The first real theatre to appear on Bankside was The Rose, built in 1587. It was here that Christopher Marlowe’s plays were first performed — works that inspired a young Shakespeare to think bigger.
In 1599, Shakespeare and his business partners did something bold. They dismantled an existing theatre in Shoreditch, carried the timbers across the frozen Thames, and rebuilt it on Bankside. They called it the Globe.
Shakespeare was not just a writer at the Globe. He was a shareholder. A businessman. He owned roughly one-eighth of the company, which meant he profited from every performance. Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth — all were written and first staged here, in this open-air theatre, for an audience who paid a penny to stand in the yard.
Those standing audience members — the “groundlings” — were Southwark’s own people. Tradesmen, apprentices, market workers from Borough Market just up the road. They ate oranges and talked back at the stage. Theatre in Shakespeare’s London was not a refined, hushed affair. It was loud and alive and completely democratic.
Shakespeare’s Own Southwark Life
Shakespeare lived in various lodgings around London, but he spent significant years in Southwark, within walking distance of the Globe. He would have known Borough Market. He would have crossed London Bridge daily — then a narrow, chaotic road lined with shops and houses, with severed heads displayed on spikes at the southern gatehouse.
His brother Edmund is buried in Southwark Cathedral, just a few minutes’ walk from the Globe site. Edmund died young, in 1607. Shakespeare paid for the burial — a large bell was rung at the service, an expensive detail, suggesting he wanted to mark the occasion properly.
The Southwark Shakespeare knew was gritty, noisy, and full of life. The Thames lapped at muddy banks. Ferrymen shouted for passengers. The smell from the tanneries drifted across the lanes. It was nothing like the polished heritage district you find there today — and yet those two places, four centuries apart, are connected by the same extraordinary story.
The South Bank Today — What Survived and What Remains
The original Globe Theatre burned down in 1613 when a theatrical cannon misfired during a performance of Henry VIII. A second Globe was built on the same site, but it was demolished by the Puritans in 1644 when they closed all the theatres in England.
Today, a faithful reconstruction — Shakespeare’s Globe — stands just 230 metres from the original site. You can watch plays performed in the open air, standing in the yard as the groundlings once did, or sitting in the covered galleries. It remains one of London’s most atmospheric experiences, and one of its most underrated.
Southwark Cathedral is still there, holding services as it has for centuries. The Clink Prison is now a museum, dark and oddly compelling. Borough Market — one of the oldest markets in London, trading on this site since at least the 12th century — continues to draw crowds every week. The area has been transformed, polished, and rebranded as the South Bank, but scratch the surface and the old bones show through.
If you want to explore this part of London on foot, our guide to London’s best neighbourhoods breaks down where to base yourself and what each area offers.
Why Southwark Still Matters
Most visitors come to London for the famous things — the Tower, Buckingham Palace, the big museums. And those places are worth your time. But Southwark tells a different story. It reminds you that great art rarely comes from places of comfort and approval.
The City of London banned theatre because it was dangerous. And the theatre went south, literally. It found a strip of muddy, lawless ground and turned it into something that would shape storytelling for the next four centuries. Everything from Hollywood screenplays to Netflix drama traces its DNA back to these Bankside stages.
The Elizabethans who came to the Globe didn’t think they were attending a cultural monument. They were having a day out. Laughing, shouting, eating, falling in love with characters they’d never meet. That’s what Southwark gave them — and what it still quietly offers to anyone willing to look for it.
London has always been a city where the outsiders end up creating something unforgettable. And it started here, on the wrong side of the river, in the shadow of a bishop’s prison.
Discover more of London’s hidden history in our guide to the Roman ruins Londoners walk past without a second glance.
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