This volume explores the professional English theatre from 1530 to 1660. The documents collected here, many published for the first time, chronicle the exciting and flourishing world of the theatre through the reigns of Henry VIII to Charles I. These exciting primary sources offer first-hand accounts, including the daily life and work of the actor, and the most complete coverage yet of all the playhouses, both public and private, including the Rose, the Globe, Red Lion and the Swan. The volume documents the various theatre companies of children, costumes and stage property matters, audience reception and behaviour, and ecclesiastical and governmental legislation. A full linking narrative and extensive bibliography detailing the location of the primary sources, provide an important reference work and valuable research tool.
Taking as notional parameters the upheaval of the French Revolution and the events leading up to the Unification of Italy, this volume charts a period of political and social turbulence in Europe and its reflection in theatrical life. Apart from considering external factors like censorship and legal sanctions on theatrical activity, the volume examines the effects of prevailing operational conditions on the internal organization of companies, their repertoire, acting, stage presentation, playhouse architecture and the relationship with audiences. Also covered are technical advances in stage machinery, scenography and lighting, the changing position of the playwright and the continuing importance of various street entertainments, particularly in Italy, where dramatic theatre remained the poor relation of the operatic, and itinerant acting troupes still constituted the norm. The 460 documents, many of them illustrated, have been drawn from sources in Britain, France and Italy and have been annotated, and translated where appropriate.
This volume brings together a wide selection of primary source materials from the theatrical history of the Middle Ages. The focus is on Western Europe between the fall of the Roman Empire and the emergence of markedly Renaissance forms in Italy. Early sections of the volume are devoted to the survival of Classical tradition and the development of the liturgical drama of the Roman Catholic Church, but the main concentration is on the genesis and growth of popular religious drama in the vernacular. Each of the major medieval regions is featured, while a final section covers the pastimes and customs of the people, a record of whose traditional activities often only survives in the margins of official recognition. The documents are compiled by a team of leading scholars in the field and the over 700 documents are all presented in modern English translation.
Focusing on the production and reception of drama during the theatre closures of 1642 to 1660, Heidi Craig shows how the 'death' of contemporary theatre in fact gave birth to English Renaissance drama as a critical field. While the prohibition on playing in many respects killed the English stage, drama thrived in print, with stationers publishing unprecedented numbers of previously unprinted professional plays, vaunting playbooks' ties to the receding theatrical past. Marketed in terms of novelty and nostalgia, plays unprinted before 1642 gained new life. Stationers also anatomized the whole corpus of English drama, printing the first anthologies and comprehensive catalogues of drama. Craig captures this crucial turning-point in English theatre history with chapters on royalist nostalgia, clandestine theatrical revivals, dramatic compendia, and the mysteriously small number of Shakespeare editions issued during the period, as well as a new incisive reading of Beaumont and Fletcher's A King and No King.
The Masters of the Revels and Elizabeth I's Court Theatre places the Revels Office and Elizabeth I's court theatre in a pre-modern, patronage and gift-exchange driven-world of centralized power in which hospitality, liberality, and conspicuous display were fundamental aspects of social life. W.R. Streitberger reconsiders the relationship between the biographies of the Masters and the conduct of their duties, rethinking the organization and development of the Office, re-examining its productions, and exploring its impact on the development of the commercial theatre. The nascent capitalist economy that developed alongside and interpenetrated the gift-driven system that was in place during Elizabeth's reign became the vehicle through which the Revels Office along with the commercial theatre was transformed. Beginning in the early 1570s and stretching over a period of twenty years, this change was brought about by a small group of influential Privy Councillors. When this project began in the early 1570s the Queen's revels were principally in-house productions, devised by the Master of the Revels and funded by the Crown. When the project was completed in the late 1590s, the Revels Office had been made responsible for plays only and put on a budget so small that it was incapable of producing them. That job was left to the companies performing at court. Between 1594 and 1600, the revels consisted almost entirely of plays brought in by professional companies in the commercial theatres in London. These companies were patronized by the queen's relatives and friends and their theatres were protected by the Privy Council. Between 1594 and 1600, for example, all the plays in the revels were supplied by the Admiral's and Chamberlain's Players which included writers such as Shakespeare, and legendary actors such as Edward Alleyn, Richard Burbage, and Will Kempe. The queen's revels essentially became a commercial enterprise, paid for by the ordinary Londoners who came to see these companies perform in selected London theatres which were protected by the Council.
Acquaints the student reader with the forms, contexts, and critical and theatrical lives of the ten plays considered to be Shakespeare's tragedies. Shakespearean tragedy is a highly complex and demanding theatre genre, but the thirteen essays, written by leading scholars in Britain and North America, are clear, concise and informative.
