Unfortunately, the archaeological record leaves no trace of the superstructure above the stage.
Norden’s images on his map of 1600 appear to be contradictory. In one image Norden suggests what appears only to be a gable following the lateral
Unfortunately, the archaeological record leaves no trace of the superstructure above the stage.
Norden’s images on his map of 1600 appear to be contradictory. In one image Norden suggests what appears only to be a gable following the lateral ridge at right angles to the circumference and which appears flush to the main frame. In the other depiction it appears to be a chorded roof ridge with a roof line parallel to the main frame similar to the stage roof depicted in the sketch of the Swan (see fig. 26 [4.4.1]).
Fig 91: The two views of the Rose (labelled ‘The stare’) in Norden’s Civitas Londini (1600) © National Library of Sweden, DelaG 89
It should be noted that Norden in 1600 also drew the stage roof in the same configuration on the Bear Garden (a feature absent from a bear-baiting arena) and the Globe (which had a different stage orientation to the Rose) suggesting that, like the houses in his drawing, these were generic, homogenous representations rather than a detailed drawing of the individual buildings themselves.311 Gurr attempts to justify the difference in the depictions of the Rose in Norden’s drawing in 1600 by suggesting ‘[e]ither Norden was wrong in showing a gable-fronted stage cover, or else the first Rose of 1587 had a stage cover like a penthouse, with its roof ridge running across a chord of the polygon [fig. 91a], while the second was altered to give it a ridge at right angles to the northern gallery wall and a gable front, as depicted by Norden [fig. 91b].’312 Gurr’s second proposal is, however, based on wrongly attributing the drip line in the yard running parallel with the front of the stage as belonging to Phase I.
The dimension of the stage pillar bases (0.47m2) suggests something about the dimensions of the pillars and what they may have been capable of holding aloft.Bowsher asserts that ‘the 1600 panorama with a forward projecting gable built into that of the main frame, [is] a structural position not contradicted by the archaeological evidence.’313
As part of his illustration of the Phase II stage cover, C. Walter Hodges includes a projecting gable built against the main roof of the tiring house (fig. 92) for containing the hoisting machinery for the ‘throune [throne] in the heavens,’ which Henslowe installed in 1595, following Norden (fig. 91a). In drawing a projecting gable out over the stage, Hodges explains:
[W]hen later I came to make measured drawings of the surprisingly smaller circumference of the Rose’s interior, I found the effect of [drawing] such atransversely-set hut very clumsy-looking and ill-adapted to the shape and size it had to occupy. Much better within this small circle would be a gable-shaped hut, thrust forwards from the ridge-line of the surrounding gallery roofs towards the centre which is shown in the four theatres—the Rose and the Swan among them—represented in John Norden’s 1600 panorama of Bankside.315
The Museum of London model of the Rose playhouse, Phase II, on display at the exhibition at the site of the remains follows C. Walter Hodges’ reconstruction.
It makes little practical sense for Henslowe to have accommodated such a ‘hut’ into the redesign of his playhouse in 1592 with the intent to add a throne in the heavens only to wait until 1595 to install it. The addition of the throne and its mechanisms was more likely to have be