Shakespeare and Theatrical Patronage in Early Modern England
Shakespeare and Theatrical Patronage in Early Modern England

Author: Paul Whitfield White

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2006-12-14

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780521034302

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During the past quarter of a century, the study of patronage-theatre relations in early modern England has developed considerably. This, however, is an extensive, wide-ranging and representative 2002 study of patronage as it relates to Shakespeare and the theatrical culture of his time. Twelve distinguished theatre historians address such questions as: What important functions did patronage have for the theatre during this period? How, in turn, did the theatre impact and represent patronage? Where do paying spectators and purchasers of printed drama fit into the discussion of patronage? The authors also show how patronage practices changed and developed from the early Tudor period to the years in which Shakespeare was the English theatre's leading artist. This important book will appeal to scholars of Renaissance social history as well as those who focus on Shakespeare and his playwriting contemporaries.

Theatrical Convention and Audience Response in Early Modern Drama
Theatrical Convention and Audience Response in Early Modern Drama

Author: Jeremy Lopez

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2002-12-05

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 1139436678

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This book gives a detailed and comprehensive survey of the diverse, theatrically vital formal conventions of the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Besides providing readings of plays such as Hamlet, Othello, Merchant of Venice, and Titus Andronicus, it also places Shakespeare emphatically within his own theatrical context, and focuses on the relationship between the demanding repertory system of the time and the conventions and content of the plays. Lopez argues that the limitations of the relatively bare stage and non-naturalistic mode of early modern theatre would have made the potential for failure very great, and he proposes that understanding this potential for failure is crucial for understanding the way in which the drama succeeded on stage. The book offers perspectives on familiar conventions such as the pun, the aside and the expository speech; and it works toward a definition of early modern theatrical genres based on the relationship between these well-known conventions and the incoherent experience of early modern theatrical narratives.

Textual Patronage in English Drama, 1570-1640
Textual Patronage in English Drama, 1570-1640

Author: David M. Bergeron

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-11-28

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 1351148028

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Through an investigation of the dedications and addresses from various printed plays of the English Renaissance, the author recuperates the richness of these prefaces and connects them to the practice of patronage. The prefatory matter discussed ranges from the printer John Day's address to readers (the first of its kind) in the 1570 edition of Gorboduc to Richard Brome's dedication to William Seymour and address to readers in his 1640 play, Antipodes. The study includes discussion of prefaces in plays by Shakespeare's contemporaries as well as Shakespeare himself, among them Marston, Jonson, and Heywood. The author uses these prefaces to show that English playwrights, printers and publishers looked in two directions, toward aristocrats and toward a reading public, in order to secure status for and dissemination of dramatic texts. The author points out that dedications and addresses to readers constitute obvious signs that printers, publishers and playwrights in the period increasingly saw these dramatic texts as occupying a rightful place in the humanistic and commercial endeavor of book production.

Heterodox Shakespeare
Heterodox Shakespeare

Author: Sean Benson

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2017-02-09

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 1683930266

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The last quarter century has seen a “turn to religion” in Shakespeare studies as well as competing assertions by secular critics that Shakespeare’s plays reflect profound skepticism and even dismissal of the truth claims of revealed religion. This divide, though real, obscures the fact that Shakespeare often embeds both readings within the same play. This book is the first to propose an accommodation between religious and secular readings of the plays. Benson argues that Shakespeare was neither a mere debunker of religious orthodoxies nor their unquestioning champion. Religious inquiry in his plays is capacious enough to explore religious orthodoxy and unorthodoxy, everything from radical belief and the need to tolerate religious dissent to the possibility of God’s nonexistence. Shakespeare’s willingness to explore all aspects of religious and secular life, often simultaneously, is a mark of his tremendous intellectual range. Taking the heterodox as his focus, Benson examines five figures and ideas on the margins of the post-Reformation English church: nonconforming puritans such as Malvolio as well as physical revenants—the walking dead—whom Shakespeare alludes to and features so tantalizingly in Hamlet. Benson applies what Keats called Shakespeare’s “negative capability”—his ability to treat both sides of an issue equally and without prejudice—to show that Shakespeare considers possible worlds where God is intimately involved in the lives of persons and, in the very same play, a world in which God may not even exist. Benson demonstrates both that the range of Shakespeare’s investigation of religious questions is more daring than has previously been thought, and that the distinction between the sacred and the profane, between the orthodox and the unorthodox, is one that Shakespeare continually engages.

Acting Companies and their Plays in Shakespeare’s London
Acting Companies and their Plays in Shakespeare’s London

Author: Siobhan Keenan

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2014-05-08

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 1472575679

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Acting Companies and their Plays in Shakespeare's London explores the intimate and dynamic relationship between acting companies and playwrights in this seminal era in English theatre history. Siobhan Keenan's analysis includes chapters on the traditions and workings of contemporary acting companies, playwriting practices, stages and staging, audiences and patrons, each illustrated with detailed case studies of individual acting companies and their plays, including troupes such as Lady Elizabeth's players, 'Beeston's Boys' and the King's Men and works by Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, Brome and Heywood. We are accustomed to focusing on individual playwrights: Acting Companies and their Plays in Shakespeare's London makes the case that we also need to think about the companies for which dramatists wrote and with whose members they collaborated, if we wish to better understand the dramas of the English Renaissance stage.

The Guild and Guild Buildings of Shakespeare's Stratford
The Guild and Guild Buildings of Shakespeare's Stratford

Author: J.R. Mulryne

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-09

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 131702964X

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The guild buildings of Shakespeare’s Stratford represent a rare instance of a largely unchanged set of buildings which draw together the threads of the town’s civic life. With its multi-disciplinary perspectives on this remarkable group of buildings, this volume provides a comprehensive account of the religious, educational, legal, social and theatrical history of Stratford, focusing on the sixteenth century and Tudor Reformation. The essays interweave with one another to provide a map of the complex relationships between the buildings and their history. Opening with an investigation of the Guildhall, which served as the headquarters of the Guild of the Holy Cross until the Tudor Reformation, the book explores the building’s function as a centre of local government and community law and as a place of entertainment and education. It is beyond serious doubt that Shakespeare was a school boy here, and the many visits to the Guildhall by professional touring players during the latter half of the sixteenth-century may have prompted his acting and playwriting career. The Guildhall continues to this day to house a school for the education of secondary-level boys. The book considers educational provision during the mid sixteenth century as well as examining the interaction between touring players and the everyday politics and social life of Stratford. At the heart of the volume is archaeological and documentary research which uses up-to-date analysis and new dendrochronological investigations to interpret the buildings and their medieval wall paintings as well as proposing a possible location of the school before it transferred to the Guildhall. Together with extensive archival research into the town’s Court of Record which throws light on the commercial and social activities of the period, this rich body of research brings us closer to life as it was lived in Shakespeare’s Stratford.

Shakespeare, Popularity and the Public Sphere
Shakespeare, Popularity and the Public Sphere

Author: Jeffrey S. Doty

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-01-16

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 1107163374

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Machine generated contents note: 1. Introduction ; 2. Richard II and the early modern public sphere ; 3. Henry IV, the theater, and the popular appetite ; 4. Political interpretation in Julius Caesar ; 5. Measure for Measure and the problem of popularity ; 6. Coriolanus the popular man ; Conclusion

The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theatre
The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theatre

Author: Richard Dutton

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2011-10-13

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780199697861

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An international team of scholars examines the theatrical world in which Shakespeare worked, tracing the social, political, and patronage pressures under which actors operated. They also explore the practicalities of playing: acquiring scripts, theatres, rehearsing, lighting, music, props, boy actors, and the role of women in an 'all-male' world.

The Tain of Hamlet
The Tain of Hamlet

Author: Laurie Johnson

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2014-10-17

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 1443869929

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Shakespeare's Hamlet is considered by many to be the cornerstone of the English literary canon, a play that remains universally relevant. Yet it seems likely that we have spent so long reading the play for its capacity to reflect ourselves that we have lost sight of the thing itself. The goal of this book is to look beyond the Hamlet that has bedazzled critics for centuries, to seek to apprehend the play in all of its historical distinctness. This is not simply the search for what the play me...