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With a star-studded guest list, this week's Evening Standard Theatre Awards were a testament to the extraordinary vigour of the London stage. But the capital's theatres have not always been held in such favour. London's first theatres evolved out of the mystery and morality plays of the Middle Ages. By the late 1500s, professional companies of actors were attaching themselves to rich households, and there was a growing demand for public performance.
The City of London, however, regarded drama as licentious and "ungodly", and so Renaissance playhouses had to be built outside the city walls. The first major one - known simply as The Theatre - opened in Shoreditch in 1576, made largely of timber. Its location was no accident: these were the "suburbs of sin", where men came to drink, gamble, visit brothels and laugh at dancing bears.
The Theatre was merely the first of many, from The Rose and the Swan to The Fortune and The Globe, often located in Southwark, beyond the reach of the city authorities. It was here that companies such as the King's Men and Lord Chamberlain's Men delighted the crowds - and where literary geniuses like Marlowe, Jonson and Shakespeare saw their works performed for the first time.
The golden age of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama came to an abrupt end when civil war broke out in 1642. London's Parliamentarian forces regarded the theatre as a sign of Royalist moral decadence and they were closed down as threats to public morals. After a brief flowering of Restoration comedy, the theatre fell from vogue in the 18th and 19th centuries, as Londoners turned instead to operas, burlesques and music halls.
But in the last years of the Victorian era, theatre made an extraordinary comeback. With the Empire at its height and middle-class incomes booming, Londoners had an insatiable desire for entertainment. By the 1900s, impresarios such as the legendary Richard D'Oyly Carte could hardly build new theatres fast enough.
London landmarks like the Palace Theatre, the Wyndham, and the Savoy all date from this period, and their owners gloried in their extravagance. "No expense has been spared both on the Stage and in the Auditorium, to study the comfort of the Public," gushed a review of the Victoria Palace - today the home of Billy Elliot.These days, the great West End theatres often strike us as cramped, old-fashioned and downright uncomfortable. But we should take pride in these ornaments to our city's dramatic heritage - especially as the entertainment on stage is better than ever.
