In contrast to the model of Phase I, here the exterior of the playhouse has followed the contract for the Fortune playhouse (see fig. 16 [4.2.2]), which stipulates that ‘all the saide fframe … to be sufficyently enclosed withoute with lathe, lyme and haire.’ This has been done to test Ronayne’s idea that ‘as playgoers approached an Elizabethan theatre they would have seen the high white walls (plaster over half-timbering) suggesting perhaps some grave and substantial Roman temple or arena’;256 and Gurr’s view, that ‘all lath-and-plaster walls would have been painted, or plastered, to conceal the woodwork, leaving a white cover. That however, would still show up the lines of the framing timbers, at least in outline.’257
Above the main entrance hangs a sign of the Rose, as in Phase I (see 4.2.1).
[256] Ronayne, ‘Totus Mundus Agit Histrionem,’ 121.
[257] Personal correspondence via email, 11 August 2016.