Acquiring a second venue created challenges for the King's Men, one of which was adapting its repertory for playing indoors. In Shakespeare's Two Playhouses, Sarah Dustagheer explores how the Blackfriars's architecture, environs, and history influenced the plays the King's Men produced after 1609, and how a few such plays are marked by a “performance duality” that indicates the company's desire to exploit visual and acoustic advantages of both indoor and outdoor spaces. Drawing on the work of philosophers like Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau, Dustagheer argues that space becomes an “active agent in providing meaning” (9), and that productions were informed and even “haunted” by prior performances—political as well as theatrical—that took place in the same spaces. To this end, she examines the repertory of the Children of the Queen's Revels, who operated in the Blackfriars prior to Shakespeare's company, and she studies contemporary analogues like Shakespeare's Globe and the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, spaces impacted by their theatrical history and their status as reimaginings of early modern sites.

The first chapter compares the Globe's “public” versus the Blackfriars's “private” aspects. Dustagheer adroitly works through known facts about the interiors of the two venues, then focuses on how the Globe's size facilitated representations of the Roman forum in plays like Julius Caesar, blurring the line between crowds within and without the play. In contrast, the greater exclusivity of the Blackfriars was modeled within a repertory that routinely included scenes featuring private performances. Chapter 2 considers studies of urban geography, noting the profusion of scenes in the Blackfriars's repertory that are set in London and the comparative dearth of such scenes at the Globe before 1609. Dustagheer convincingly argues that the drama “encouraged the audience to contemplate onstage action with their instinctive knowledge of London never far from their consciousness” (90), so that references to districts associated with prostitution or debtors, for instance, would have helped audiences at plays like The Alchemist to piece out performances with their thoughts.

The third chapter focuses on visual and aural distinctions of the two spaces. For example, it argues that the acoustic environment of the Globe was well suited to trumpets and alarums, storms and military actions, whereas that of the Blackfriars was apt for subtler and more extensive musical scoring. Meanwhile, the smaller venue led playwrights to include jewels and costumes that glistered in the candlelight, something less available to Globe playwrights given that theater's size and natural lighting. The chapter offers The Tempest as a play known for showing Shakespeare's transition to an indoor environment, proposing instead that the contrast between its raucous storm and delicate music indicate a “hybridity” that suggests the play was built for both houses. The book concludes with a chapter on how a particular location's history might haunt productions that occur there. In an especially persuasive turn, it describes how the Blackfriars was used by playwrights “as a discursive space to think through the Reformation and its implications” (141). In short, its history as a monastery that was secularized and sold in the previous century impacted the audience's experience and interpretation of the fictional events in several plays, perhaps most notably during the “ghostly re-enactment” (157) of Henry's divorce in 2.4 of Henry VIII, the actual event having occurred in the same building, possibly in the same room.

The book is more interested in the history of the venues and repertory comparisons than it is in text or performance. As a result, the stakes can seem modest, though the “haunting” with which Dustagheer is concerned could be fruitful ground for those who pursue its implications for the plays and their realizations onstage. Unavoidably, the book moves through some broad speculations (readily acknowledged throughout), and our scant information about the interior of the Blackfriars, and the few King's Men plays under consideration, leaves doubt about whether a late turn to “hybridity” holds in light of its other plays, particularly when we consider their music, their repeated attentions to small props and jewels, or the company's extensive touring and known history playing alternate venues. Still, Dustagheer's book should prove valuable to those interested in how the history and former repertory of the Blackfriars impacted what the King's Men produced for it, as well as those working on the influence of the Reformation on period playwrights. It will also benefit those interested in architectural and spatial comparisons between the two venues, given its sound history and informed speculations.