Macbeth at the back of the Craven Arms, Southam

A pie, a pint and a performance… where to find Shakespeare in Southam. This playbill is from a period when theatre was highly regulated.

Only theatres that held a patent could stage theatrical entertainments, something that only London’s Covent Garden and Drury Lane held.

So these were the only places in the country that could legally stage Shakespeare.

However for smaller towns, where there was no permanent theatre. Local magistrates could license plays occasionally for up to 60 days at a time under the Representations Act.

This is the case here, as the New Theatre is situated at the back of the Craven Arms Inn.

This specific location is thought to be where the stage coaches stopped over on the coach road between Coventry and Oxford, spilling out passengers hungry for food and entertainment after their arduous journey.

This double bill would have offered a welcome distraction and as one of Shakespeare’s more popular plays, the tragic tale of Macbeth clearly needed very little introduction.

By contrast the other entertainment of the evening is described in great detail on the playbill.

The adventures of the lover Don Juan are a melodramatic riot of seduction, slaying, dissipation and ghostly goings-on.

We don’t know what Shakespeare would have thought about the programme that evening, but we know that Southam was a familiar location as he mentions the market town in his work:

WARWICK
Say, Somerville, what says my loving son?
And, by thy guess, how nigh is Clarence now?

SOMERSET
At Southam I did leave him with his forces,
And do expect him here some two hours hence.

WARWICK
Then Clarence is at hand, I hear his drum.

SOMERSET
It is not his, my lord; here Southam lies:
The drum your honour hears marcheth from Warwick.

(Henry VI, Part 3, Act 5, Scene 1)