The starting point for this brief study (which is a summary of several others) is simple: it is not so much in the location of the theatrical site as in the whole of the constructed spaces in which it is situated, that we glean what few insights there are into the evolution of theatrical space.
In Greece, in Rome, then in the Western world of the late Middle Ages, the primary dramatic site has always been an urban one, so that we could assert, paradoxically, that the question of the origins of the theatrical space is less a matter for theatre studies than an aspect of town planning!
Thus if we are to analyse the theatre we must analyse the town. In any case, the two poles between which the destiny of dramatized spaces is played out can be seen in the morphological unit which dominates the history both of the forms of the urban environment and the individual habitat and of the evolution of the theatrical space itself. In effect there exists an original space, a sort of matrix at the heart of the lived space of the urban/residential area, within which human enterprise includes, from the outset, activity which is generally dramatic: the hall-courtyaid-square,1 a complex of spaces which are identical in morphological, functional and symbolic terms and which is differentiated only by the built environment within which it is inscribed, provides a framework within which are carried out all the collective activities connected with the habitat and the urban area.