LONDON VAUXHALL DEALERS

The whole world is watching London during Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee, and soon the Olympics, so it's a perfect time to see "Open City: London, 1500-1700", which opened tonight at Washington's Folger Shakespeare Library.

The free exhibit foreshadows the current fab four-day Diamond Jubilee in many ways, including centuries-old depictions and descriptions of St. Paul's Cathedral, where Queen Elizabeth will conclude her Diamond Jubilee celebrations on June 5.

Some comparisons can be made with the 1547 coronation of 9-year-old King Edward VI, who rode under a "golden canopy, dressed in silver and white velvet, amply garnished with rubies, diamonds, and pearls" to St. Paul's -- where "an acrobat slid down a rope anchored to the steeple...and performed tumbling exercises..."

An itemized bill from Great Britain's Office of the Revels shows charges for 46 tailors, some working "daies" and "nyghtes", to make elaborate garments for that royal event 465 years ago.

"We could have done this exhibition at any time, but we knew people would be paying particular attention to London this summer, and we wanted to show them 'our' London," said exhibition curator Kathleen Lynch, executive director of the Folger Institute.

"Their" London during the 200 year period between 1500 and 1700 experienced "explosive growth from a small, medieval city of 50,000 people, all within the city walls, to almost 500,000 people, one-quarter outside the walls," Lynch said in a walk-through today. She curated the show with Elizabeth (Betsy) Walsh, the Folger's head of reader services.

The exhibit traces the dramatic political, religious, and economic changes that reshaped London, from the dissolution of the monasteries, to plagues, civil wars, economic upheavals, to the rebuilding of the city after the Great Fire of 1666. The changes are tracked through three main gathering places—churches, theaters, and markets.

The earliest item is a 1493 edition of the "Nuremberg Chronicle", a world history, showing a woodcut of a "generic city", which the tome used to depict not only London, but at least three other cities.

"London wasn't worth its own woodcut," Lynch said with a smile, and then guided me to the exhibit's final map, showing "amazing growth in area, wealth, and power by 1690 when London is on the verge of creating a new empire."

The exhibit's story really begins when King Henry VIII broke from the Catholic Church in the 1530s and began the dissolution of the monasteries, most of which were headquartered in London. "Henry claims all wealth and property and doles it out to his cronies," Lynch commented, "while the City of London takes over charitable aspects like hospitals and orphanages."

Blackfriars, a Dominican monastery on the western side of the walled city, was turned into an "upscale residential community", with a renowned theater, and even the headquarters and warehouse for the Office of Revels, in charge of floats and other pomp for royal processions.

A mid-16th century Revels list of “moneye payd for stuf” cleared from a Blackfriars religious site, notes carting away “the great altar stone..." When Queen Mary, a Catholic, came to the throne, parishioners forced the Revels office to make restitution for the desecration.

Far more positive happenings in Blackfriars included performances of Shakespeare's "Othello", although written for the (less expensive and less intimate) Globe Theatre which opened in 1599, and Ben Jonson's "The Alchemist", among other major plays of the time.

One of the exhibit's most exciting items is Shakespeare's copy of the deed for a townhouse he purchased in Blackfriars. "We know that Shakespeare would have touched this; it's his copy, signed by the seller." Lynch said. The copy signed by Shakespeare, who was "known as a shrewd investor", is in London's Guild Hall Library.

Back then, both the seller's and the buyer's copy were made on one long piece of paper, and after the signing, the document would have been cut in two in wavy indentations. For verification of authenticity in any future transactions, the two copies would have to mesh exactly.

That explains the wavy indentures on the top of Shakespeare's deed, and on top of a much smaller contract near it, for a 9-year apprenticeship. Thus, the origin of "indentured", as in servitude. Would-be apprentices were "streaming into London, immigrants mainly from all parts of England," Lynch said, a main reason for the city's population explosion.

An exquisite engraving shows the coats of arms of all 60 chief trade and craft companies in London in 1596. At least half the men in London belonged to these companies through the 17th century.

Other highlights among the exhibition's some 100 items -- maps, diaries, books, letters, drawings, almost all from the Folger collection:

• A panoramic view of 1647 London by Wenceslaus Hollar, showing a flotilla along the Thames much like the June 3 Diamond Jubilee flotilla. Two decades after the etching was made, many of the buildings were destroyed by the 1666 Great Fire. The Hollar work has never before been exhibited.
• "Tittle-Tattle; Or, the several Branches of Gossipping", woodcut, circa1560–1600, depicts working women in the marketplace as mere "scolding sluts" in a derogatory poem and images.
• "Bills of Mortality" and other writings about the ravaging plague in 1965 and the Great Fire in 1966, which destroyed the greater part of London with the city walls. During 1665, there were 97,306 burials -- 68,596 due to the plague, "London's Dreadful Visitation".
• John Locke's "A Letter Concerning Toleration", 1689. Locke wrote, "Why are assemblies less sufferable in a church than in a theatre or market?" The Folger notes, however, that "Locke was not ahead of his time: he excluded Catholics and atheists from toleration."

One of the final items is the favorite of both curators Lynch and Walsh. A 1690 list of orphans and poor children -- educated for the British Navy at a math school built at the former Greyfriars monastery -- and their destinations, including New England, Virginia, and far beyond.

For more info: "Open City: London, 1500-1700". Free. On view from June 5 through September 30. Series of free talks on Mondays at 7 P.M., followed by a reception and viewing of the exhibition. Folger Shakespeare Library, 201 East Capitol Street, SE, Washington, DC, 202- 544-4600.