Well, I think it's interesting...

Hold on to your neck ruffs fans of Elizabethan theatre, archeologists in London believe they have found the remains of the Red Lion, the city's first purpose-built theatre in-huh?

Get yourself one of these, and then hold on to it.

The culture that gave us Shakespeare
loved bloodsports. Loved them.

I never would have thought it was possible to hear the sound of someone's eye's glazing over, but here we are. You can bail out now if you like, I'll understand. Still there? Super. The archeologists have so far uncovered what was probably the stage as well as the beer cellar and the dog fighting pit, which requires some explanation. There's a beer cellar because the Red Lion started out as a pub, and there's a dog fighting pit because dog and bear fighting were popular entertainments and buildings built for them evolved into theatres. Also, fun fact: Elizabethans were monsters.

It's not at all box shaped, but these people
thought leaches were medical equpiment so...

But hold on! You say. This is science and science requires evidence goddamnit! Well, I'll forgive you the salty language, but you're right. Archeologists believe they have found the remains of London's oldest playhouse, but really it's just a hole in the ground with some timbers and some junk consistent with what they'd expect to find in a four hundred year old theatre. Things like coins, beer bottles and some little green ceramic money boxes traditionally used by theatre operators to collect admission fees and by insufferable pedants to explain that that's where we get the term box office. Did you...did you see what I did there? Just snuck it in?

Ok, but that's like finding a couple broken beer bottles and a busted Dance Dance Revolution machine and assuming you've uncovered the ruins of a Dave and Busters. Surely they must have more to go on than loose change and a cash box, right?

Hey future archeologists, good luck figuring out that the hell these were for.

Because dealing with
contractors, amiright?

Well they do and I'm glad I pretended you asked, because it's super interesting...well, ok, to level set, it's as interesting as sixteenth century theatrical archeology can possibly be. Which is somewhat. The dig is in London's West End which is still a theatre district, and it's consistent with where everyone thought the Red Lion would be. But the interesting (again, somewhat interesting) thing is that the wooden posts that make up the find match the dimensions described in a lawsuit between the theatre's owner.

People back then loved to sue. So much so that it's actually possible to identify archeological sites through their lawsuits. In fact, the only surviving examples of Shakespeare's signature are from lawsuits he was-what? Don't look at me like that. Hey, at least I'm not talking about Star Trek or video games or something. I mean, I'm allowed to have more than one interest. I contain multitudes or...something.

Look, it's ok, I bore me too.