'Welcome to London'

'London, the Head and Metropolis of England...the seat of the British Empire, and the Chamber of the English Kings.' The description is that of a foreign traveller, Paul Hentzner, in 1598. Awestruck and not a little amazed, he noted that 'The Wealth of the World is wafted to it by the Thames'. More briefly he noted his companion's loss of nine crowns to the skill of the London pickpockets. This London to which Shakespeare, the provincial, came in the 1590's, was already a magnet to people of all descriptions. A riverside town, it depended for its existence on trade by sea and river, and for its greatness on that trade plus its close links with the government of the realm. The centuries had seen its gradual growth from a leading town to a capital comparable with almost any in Europe. To the provincial, faced for the first time with its size, its bustle, its close-packed houses and its rush of traffic on road and river alike, it was alarming or electric.

To those sojourning in London it had all that a great capital can offer. Gresham's Royal Exchange had achieved its object as a centre for the merchant community. Whole streets were occupied by shops, the London artisan making up the raw materials of the provinces and the London shop-keeper selling the finished product. Wealth and talent were concentrated there- all the wit and wisdom of the Elizabethan age. There men of many tongues mingled, sermons were endowed and good preachers at a premium. The great cathedral of St Paul served both as a church and as a series of 'walks'. In it journeymen stood for hire and gossip ran unrestrained. Round the cathedral and the five-score parish churches lay the narrow-fronted houses, a cellar below, a shop or workshop on the ground floor, living quarters on the first and second floors and a garret above. The gables and steep-pitched roofs covered an urban people still wedded to the country, going Maying on May Day and finding open country within a mile of its street doors. Shakespeare could find there all that he needed, audiences, characters, encouragement and competition.