Dig at theater where Shakespeare worked uncovers a surprise

LONDON — London’s relentless building boom has dug up another chunk of the city’s history — one with a surprise for scholars of Shakespearean theater.

Archaeologists are excavating the remains of the Curtain, a 16th century playhouse where some of the Bard’s plays were first staged, before a new apartment tower sprouts on the site.

Heather Knight, senior archaeologist at Museum of London Archaeology, said the play may still have premiered at the Curtain in 1599, but without the prologue.

The Curtain’s remains were uncovered in 2011 on a site earmarked for development in Shoreditch, a scruffy-chic, fast-gentrifying area on the edge of London’s financial district.

Archaeologists began excavating intensively last month, before construction of a 37-story luxury apartment tower and office complex named — with a nod to its heritage — the Stage.

The site’s developers have promised to keep the foundations of the historic theater on public view and to build a visitor center to display some of the archaeologists’ finds.

Workers have uncovered sections of the theater’s gravel yard, where “groundlings” who had bought cheap tickets stood, and segments of wall up to 5 feet high.

The new building that will rise on the site — where apartments are being offered starting at about $1 million — is part of a construction boom, fueled by London’s sky-high property prices, that is transforming large tracts of the city.