During the late Middle Ages and until after the middle of the sixteenth century, outdoor production of the British drama took place, in general, in three different kinds of temporary theatre. These are the theatre of a circular platea or Place surrounded by “scaffolds”; the theatre of pageant-wagons each performing part of a scriptural cycle at successive “stops” throughout a town or city; and the theatre of a booth stage set up in a marketplace or on a village green. In recent years much new information has accumulated about each of these three kinds of theatre; new problems have been defined; and it is now possible to advance some new evidence and some new interpretations of old evidence. This article is therefore an attempt to sum up the state of our present knowledge about the three major kinds of outdoor theatre in Britain before the age of Shakespeare. Since that knowledge is in some respects still imperfect and tentative, I shall deal chiefly with questions of physical form, since here, thanks to a fortuitous abundance of pictorial evidence, our information is fuller and more precise than in the case of origins or of use.

The theatrical fare that eventually became known as American vaudeville began as a random assortment of acts staged whereever there was space large enough for people to gather. It was called, appropriately enough, “variety,” and was an undisciplined affair consisting of routines pilfered from practically every element of theatrical convention: the drama, the circus, the standup comic, burlesque, the ministrel show, the omnibus act of the touring trouper.

The scholarly work of reconstructing vanished theatres is of crucial importance to theatre history. The playhouse provides the physical plant for the drama; therefore its shape exerts enormous influence upon plays written for it. Its size and accommodations for the audience reflect and may even determine the drama's function within a given society. To ignore the physical setting of a play's first production is an error almost as damning for the theatre historian as the practice of the literary scholar who forgets that plays are not written for examination in classes.

John Joseph Holland, one of the most prominent scene painters of the early American theatre, was born in England about 1776 and apprenticed at the age of nine to Gaetano Marinari, chief artist at the King's Theatre, Haymarket. “For upwards of forty years,” George Raymond recalled, Marinari “was accounted one of the first scene painters in Europe.” He trained Holland in scene painting and architecture, and the young artist taught himself landscape painting in watercolors. Soon after his apprenticeship was over, Holland went to Convent Garden, where he was employed from August, 1794, to February, 1795, but he later returned to the King's Theatre, where Thomas Wignell found him in 1796 and engaged him for the Chestnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia.

Rehearsals of Joseph and his Brethren had begun some days before the bit players, among them myself, joined the company. Sets had been planned and the vast number of costumes designed and put in hand some months previously. The production was to be one of the most lavish I ever encountered. Drama and pageantry were combined in a big spectacular offering resembling Ben Hur, The Garden of Allah, The Daughter of Heaven and other stage epics which preceded the mammoth photography of the cinema. Based upon the Biblical narrative, Joseph and His Brethren by Louis Napoleon Parker was first performed on January 11, 1913, at the Century Theatre erected between 62nd and 63nd Streets at Central Park West. The house was labelled “the Millionaires' Theatre” because several of New York's millionaires were responsible for its building. Considered the last word in theatre construction, the place yet managed to convey the idea of a luxury hotel. It was under the management of George Tyler, an associate of the Liebler Company.