摘要：The seventeenth-century playhouses of north-west London, especially the Red Bull, have suffered a bad press, from their own day to the present. This paper attempts to assess the basis of the evidence for their low reputation, through an examination of the companies which occupied them, their repertories, and their actors. While there are a number of indications of a somewhat populist and old-fashioned character in both repertory and acting style, there are balancing signs of high levels of performance and production in the companies which used the theatres, and of the acquisition of up-to-date and fashionable plays throughout the Caroline period. The difference in standards, as well as in audience, at the Red Bull in particular, has been overemphasised by modern historians and commentators, influenced as they have been by anecdotal comments on the theatres composed in the interregnum and Restoration.
