ABSTRACT

The Roman theatre was essentially an import. The indigenous theatre’s beginnings are, as may be expected, often cloaked in fragmentary documents and disputed records. But that there was theatrical life in Britain after the Romans left can hardly be doubted. Itinerant jongleurs – singers, musicians, dancers – were probably roaming the country before the Norman invasion, and later we hear of ‘goliards’, entertainers who were formerly monks or clerks, but who perhaps preferred an alternative lifestyle. The first workable evidence probably comes from the palace of Northumbrian King Edwin at Yeavering in the seventh century. Here there are what appear to be the remains of a theatre, and there is some difficult evidence to suggest that Christian dramas may have been performed here.