7- 9 Around St Paul's

Shakespeare around St Paul's

Make sure that you have ascended to the top of One New Change (7) on the map, and are at the end of the roof terrace overlooking St Paul's.  There is a good view from here of the Cathedral and London looking south.

Where you are now, New Change, gets it's name from an street that used to be near here called Old Change.  It's name derived from a building in the street where there was a precious metal exchange to be used for making coinage.

The Cathedral that is here now is the one built by Sir Christopher Wren after the Great Fire (1666) burned down the one that was there in Shakespeare's time (shown in image below). Wren had great plans for a new London, with a different layout (see https://assets.londonist.com/uploads/2016/11/i875/wrenmodern.jpeg) However, the need to get London rebuilt quickly and trading again meant that the new street plan was modelled on the old one. 

The area of St Paul's was important to William Shakespeare for a number of reasons.  Firstly it was an area with over thirty bookshops, some of which were selling his work.  Before he died in 1616, WS had had 18 plays published, as well as books of poetry.


The other reason is that WS would have needed access to books as source material for his own writing. He had a special relationship with printer and publisher Richard Field, a fellow Stratfordian.  It's thought the Field helped WS get access to a range of books now recognised as major sources for his work.  Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Holinshead's Chronicles and Robert Greene’s Pandosto are among the works that have been identified as being used by WS as a source for his own work.

See this link for more information:
https://politicworm.com/background/birth-of-the-commercial-press/richard-field-and-blackfriars/

Now go back down the lift, and go across the road towards St Paul's In the north east corner of the churchyard is St Paul's Cross. 

St Paul's Cross

There has been an open air pulpit here since the 13th century.  Used for preaching, public proclamations.  

Among other subjects, the cross had been used for preaching against plays. In 1577 (At a time before WS had come to London, he was 13 and still in Stratford Upon Avon) a preacher names Thomas White accused plays of causing the plague:

"...Looke but vppon the common playes in London, and see the multitude that flocketh to them and followeth them: beholde the sumptuous Theatre housee, a continuall monument of Londons prodigalitie and folly. But I vnderstande they are nowe forbidden by cause of the plague, I like the pollicye well if it holde still, for a disease is but bodged or patched vp that is not cured in the cause, and the cause of plagues is sinne, if you looke to it well: and the cause of sinne are playes: therefore the cause of plagues are playes..."  

From 'A sermon preached at Pawles Crosse on Sunday the thirde of Nouember 1577. in the time of the plague' - Thomas White 1550-1624.

WS would have known the 'Pawles Crosse' as a boarded up monument.  Elizabeth I had it covered, as it had become a focus for what we might call now 'demonstrations' of religious difference, which tended to end in violence. 
See this link for more information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Paul%27s_Cross

Temple Bar

Carry on until you get to Temple Bar on the right. 

There is an information panel here to read about Temple Bar.  This version of Temple Barr was built after the Great Fire  However, WS would have been familiar with it's predecessor which was sited (as this one previously was) where the Strand meets Fleet Street.
See this link for more information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Bar,_London

Go through Temple Barr into Paternoster Square (there is a pay public toilet here), then take the first left to get to Ave Maria Lane. Over the road is Stationers' Hall (8 0n the map). 

Stationers Hall is the home of the Stationers Company, a guild that was first started in 1403. It is the reason that the bookshops developed around this area is Shakespeare's time. All published works had to be approved by the Stationers' Company.  They checked, on behalf of the crown, that there was no sedition or ideas that conflicted with current religious ideas in the works.

Continue down Ave Maria Lane, then left towards St Paul's again.  Go into the gate leading into the churchyard on the right of the Cathedral.  On the floor is a plan superimposing the new cathedral plan on the old one (9 on the map).

When Shakespeare knew St Paul's, the cathedral was not in the best of states.  The spire had burned down in 1559 and the roof had been damaged.  The Reformation meant that the Church was less wealthy, and the cathedral had for some time been used for a number of secular purposes as well as divine service.  Social meetings and trade related gatherings were common within cathedral and the precincts, The aisle became known as Paul's Walk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul%27s_walk. WS was aware of this. In Henry IV, Falstaff says:

"I bought him in Paul’s, and he’ll buy me a horse in Smithfield. An (if) I could get me but a wife in the stews, I were manned, horsed, and wived."  

He is referring to Bardolph, and the fact that he picked him up as a servant at St Paul's Cathedral, where unemployed men would hang about for casual employment. As Smithfield was a cattle market who also sold old nags, and stews (brothels) are an unlikely place to pick up a virtuous wife, WS is suggesting that the quality of worker available at St Paul's was not high.

Now go out of the gate, and cross the road.  Go past the City of London Information Centre (a useful place for other London related information) to Carter Lane.  Turn right and continue down Carter Lane looking for an unprepossessing looking plaque on the left hand side (10 on the map).

We will explain this plaque in the next stage.

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