Long before the royal traitor headlines, Shoreditch playhouses were staging stories of betrayal, succession and feuding royals, and the neighbourhood still carries that history
Before the Tabloids, There Were Playhouses
Most people who wander through Shoreditch today, with its coffee shops and co-working spaces, do not realise they are walking over some of the most important ground in English theatre history. In the late sixteenth century, this area was home to The Theatre, built in 1576 and widely regarded as one of the first purpose-built playhouses in London, and later the Curtain, nearby. Shakespeare was associated with both. So when I read the London Prat piece on Prince William reportedly calling Earl Spencer and Harry traitors, I could not help thinking that Shoreditch has seen this plot before.
The Modern Plot
An unnamed source claims the heir believes his younger brother read their uncle memoir first. Geo News reports the heir called both men traitors. The uncle says he gave everyone advance notice. Brothers, an uncle, a document, accusations of betrayal and a crown in the background. Any Elizabethan playgoer would have recognised the ingredients instantly.
The Elizabethan Plot
Shakespeare history plays and tragedies are full of feuding royal relatives. Brothers who turn on each other, uncles who scheme, heirs anxious about loyalty, younger sons who feel overlooked. Hamlet uncle, Claudius, remains the most famous theatrical uncle in history. The histories are packed with succession disputes and accusations of treason, which in that era carried consequences far more serious than a headline. Audiences who crowded into Shoreditch playhouses were watching stories about power and family that felt urgent to them, because the questions of succession and loyalty were very much alive in their own time.
Then and Now
What strikes me is how little the emotional core has changed. The Elizabethans were fascinated by the idea that a family, however grand, could be torn apart by suspicion and rivalry. So are we. The difference is that Shakespeare gave his characters soliloquies to explain themselves. The modern royal family, by contrast, says nothing, and leaves the explaining to anonymous insiders and comedy writers.
A Modern Performance
The London Prat has staged its own version, in the form of a video on YouTube. It is shorter than a Shakespeare history play, which I say with love.
Walking the Ground
If you want to feel the history, take a walk. Archaeological excavations in Shoreditch in recent decades have uncovered remains associated with both The Theatre and the Curtain, and the area has worked to mark and celebrate that heritage. Standing near where those playhouses once stood, it is easy to imagine crowds gathering to watch kings and princes betray each other on stage, then heading out into the streets to argue about who was in the right. It is not so different from Shoreditch today, where people still gather to argue, just over flat whites instead of ale.
What Shakespeare Might Make of It
I suspect Shakespeare would have been drawn to the uncle. Earl Spencer, the late princess brother, is a classic Shakespearean figure: close to the family, carrying its memories, and acting in a way that shifts the balance between the next generation. Shakespeare rarely made uncles purely villainous or purely good. He made them complicated, and let the audience decide. That would be a better approach to this story than much of the current coverage manages.
He would also, I think, have given the late princess herself a presence, as he so often did with absent or departed figures whose memory shapes the living. Not as a joke, but as the emotional heart of the drama.
A Note on Treason
It is worth remembering that in Shakespeare day, the word traitor was a matter of life and death. People were executed for treason. The fact that it can now be tossed around, allegedly, over a book is in some ways a measure of how far we have come. Shoreditch audiences of the 1590s would have found that almost unimaginable.
Theatre Is Still Here
Shoreditch theatrical spirit did not end with the Elizabethans. East London today is home to fringe theatres, performance spaces and experimental companies that stage everything from classic revivals to brand new writing. Many of them tackle family, power and betrayal with the same appetite Shakespeare did. It would not surprise me if, within a year, some small company in a converted railway arch put on a play about two brothers and an uncle and a book, with the names changed and the jokes sharpened. That is how theatre has always worked: taking the stories people are talking about in the street and putting them on a stage where they can be looked at properly. The playhouses of 1576 did it with kings. Today companies do it with whoever is in the headlines. The ground is the same. So is the appetite of the audience, who still want to see powerful people revealed as human, and still leave arguing about who was right.
Curtain Call
Shoreditch has always been a place for stories about power, family and betrayal. This week, it has another. The London Prat, which has been staging its own royal farces since 1961 at https://prat.uk/, has written the modern script. Bohiney, at https://bohiney.com/, offers the American production. And for more of my wanderings through East London past and present, head to my author page.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/prince-william-called-earl-spencer-and-harry-traitors/
