A Play Without a Stage: English Renaissance Drama, 1642-1660 by Heidi Craig A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of English University of Toronto ⃝c Copyright 2017 by Heidi Craig Abstract A Play Without a Stage: English Renaissance Drama, 1642-1660 Heidi Craig Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of English University of Toronto 2017 A Play Without a Stage: English Renaissance Drama, 1642 to 1660, focuses on the pro- duction of early modern drama during the English Civil War and Interregnum, when commercial playing was outlawed. Despite the prominence of book history as a method- ology over the last three decades, the era of the theatre ban { when performance declined but dramatic publication flourished { remains understudied. It is in this era, I argue, that the genre, indeed even the critical field, of early modern drama as we know it was created. While the prohibition on playing in many respects killed the English Renaissance stage { the theatres were closed, demolished, converted into tenements, and once famous actors and playwrights, now unemployed, died in poverty { the professional drama of 1576-1642 not only lived on, but thrived, in print. In the absence of contemporary performances, stationers presented pre-war plays as relics of an absent, idealized theatrical culture. The theatre ban prematurely aged the genre of English drama, but at the same time, sta- tioners began publishing previously unprinted Tudor and Stuart plays. These plays, at once new and old, were marketed in terms of novelty and finitude: they represented the latest offerings of a tradition that had drawn to a close. The era's playbook publishers capitalized on theatrical nostalgia, but also looked ahead to the moment when the store ii of previously unprinted professional drama would run out. At that point, stationers turned to the project of anatomizing the whole corpus of English drama, printing the first dramatic anthologies and comprehensive dramatic catalogues in the 1650s. With chapters on royalist nostalgia, clandestine theatrical revivals, dramatic compendia and anthologies, the mysteriously small number of Shakespeare editions issued during the period and the critical conceptions of the theatre ban since the Restoration, A Play Without a Stage argues that the death of contemporary English theatre gave birth to English Renaissance drama. The seeds of this field { that is, of the modern canon, the editorial and performance traditions, and Shakespeare's supremacy in all { were planted not in the eighteenth century, but in the mid-seventeenth century. iii Acknowledgements My first and greatest thanks are to my incredible supervisor Jeremy Lopez, who en- couraged this project from the start and made the final product immeasurably better. He was an exemplary reader of the entire manuscript (many times over) { his mentor- ship, generous support, and guidance have been wonderful gifts. Thank you to also to my committee members Holger Syme and Marjorie Rubright, who were rigorous and creative interlocutors. Alan Galey and Lynne Magnusson offered insightful commentary during my defense. Special thanks are due to my external examiner Marta Straznicky, for her illuminating reader's report and questions during the defense. In addition to those named above, thank you to my wonderful teachers and colleagues at the University of Toronto who helped me at various stages of my degree: Sarah Star, Cristina D'Amico, Jeff Espie, Anthony Oliveira, Chris Laprade, Dan White, Chris Warley, Paul Stevens, Liza Blake, Alex Hernandez, Audrey Walton, and Tom Keymer. My project took shape during the Folger year-long dissertation seminar led by Jean Howard and Pamela Smith, and was greatly improved by conversations with them and with my fellow seminar participants, especially Katherine Walker, Jonathan Holmes, Andrew Miller, Ben VanWagoner, Aaron Pratt and Dean Clement. At the Huntington Library, I had the opportunity to share ideas with many illustrious scholars in the California sunshine; thanks in particular to Paulina Kewes, Heather James, Jack Lynch, Thomas Cogswell, Marjorie Swann, Elaine Hobby, Claire Bowditch, and Penelope Geng. Versions of chapters were presented at various conferences, after which they were improved by fruitful conversations with Laura Estill, Marissa Nicosia, Eoin Price, Harry Newman, Emma Depledge, Rachel Willie, Musa Gurnis, Claire Bourne, Catherine Clifford, Joshua McEvilla, Roze Hentschell, Stephen Watkins, and Richard Preiss. I gratefully acknowledge the generous support I received for this project from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), le Fonds de recherche soci´et´eet culture du Qu´ebec, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship iv Program, the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Huntington Library. Thank you to my immediate and extended family for their continued love and support: my parents Sue and Ian, sisters Nadia and Julie, and Ben, Josephine and Harrison; and in-laws Francie and Lance Howard. My Toronto family supported me, loved me and literally kept me alive over the course of six years: thank you to Sheila and Tim Casgrain, Judy and John Groves, Alynn Casgrain and David Upper, and Andrew and Lindsay Groves. Love and thank you to my Uncle Andrew Craig who instilled a love of poetry in me. Erin O'Donnell was an ideal friend and roommate during my months in California. And thank you to my big beautiful family spread out across Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and the USA: the Grechs, the Winders, the Henrys, the Rathies, the Casgrains, the Groves, the Bartletts, the Listers, and the Howards. I am indebted to you all and I love you very much. Finally, all my love and thanks to my brilliant and beautiful husband Nathan Howard: my beloved is mine, and I am his. v Contents Introduction 1 1 Prologue: Perambulation around London in 1643, 1652, and 1657 . 1 2 Theatrical Nostalgia . 8 1 Dead Theatre 31 1 1642-1648: Dramatic Abundance in \A Long Winter" . 34 2 1648-1656: \The Press Acts" and Printed \Relics" . 45 3 1652-1659: New and Old Plays . 54 4 Conclusion: Rotten Authors in Print, or Literary Drama . 60 2 \Playing the Old Play": Theatrical Performance, 1642-1660 62 1 Mucedorus in 1653: Anti-Theatrical Nostalgia . 65 2 Beaumont and Fletcher on the London Stage in 1647 and 1648 . 72 3 Interregnum Drolls, late 1640s-1655 . 82 4 The Sanctioned Performance of New Plays, 1653-1659 . 91 vi 3 Missing Shakespeare: English Renaissance Drama in Print, 1642-1660 98 1 Shakespeare's Missing Stationers, 1642-1660 . 102 2 Shakespeare's Interregnum Stationers: William Leake and Jane Bell . 118 4 Dramatic Compendia of the 1650s 134 1 Serial Publication of Small Dramatic Collections . 137 1.1 The Picture of Dramatic Genre and Canon in New Plays . 141 2 Cotgrave's English Treasury of Wit and Language . 145 2.1 The Picture of Dramatic Genre and Canon in The English Treasury 152 3 \Exact and Perfect" Catalogues of English Plays in Print . 156 3.1 The Picture of Dramatic Genre and Canon in the Catalogues . 168 4 Conclusion: 1650s Dramatic Compendia after 1660 . 172 5 A Cultural History of the Theatre Ban after 1660 177 1 Acts of Oblivion: Rhetorical conceptions of the Theatre Ban, 1660-1700 . 182 2 The Theatre Ban in the Long Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries . 188 3 The Theatre Ban in Modern Criticism . 200 4 Epilogue: Dramatic Resurrection . 208 Works Consulted 211 vii List of Figures 5.1 Frontispiece to The Wits, or Sport Upon Sport (Francis Kirkman, 1662) . 179 viii Introduction 1 Prologue: Perambulation around London in 1643, 1652, and 1657 Overdone. But shall all our houses of resort in the suburbs be pulled down? Pompey. To the ground, mistress. Overdone. Why, here's a change indeed in the commonwealth! What shall become of me? -Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, 1.2.93-97 Around 1643, an anonymous antiquary penned \Some notes for my Perambulation in and round ye Citye of London for six miles and Remnants of divers worthie things and men," twenty-seven manuscript pages describing his circuits in and around the Lon- don suburbs of Southwark, Bermondsey, and Hackney. He describes the Tabard Inn, the Southwark landmark famous as the place where Chaucer's pilgrims gather at the beginning of The Canterbury Tales. The antiquary quotes from The Canterbury Tales describing the Tabard, reproducing John Stow's citation of Chaucer's lines from the 1633 edition of his Survey of London (from which the antiquary drew extensively for his own survey), and adding new material from the Canterbury Tales on the Tabard as well. The antiquary concludes with another literary historical anecdote about the Tabard, this one connected to early modern theatre. \The Tabard I find to have been the re- 1 2 sort Mastere Will Shakspear Sir Sander Duncombe Lawrence Fletcher Richard Burbage Ben Jonson and the rest of their roystering associates in King Jameses time as in the large room they have cut their names on the Pannels."1 James Shapiro argues that the anecdote represents \the only act of literary fellowship on Shakespeare's part that we know of during" the Jacobean period.'2 In fact, the Tabard anecdote reveals less about Shakespeare's actual activities in the Jacobean period, and more about the retrospective impression of Jacobean theatre from the perspective of the early 1640s. Moreover, the Tabard episode is not \literary," as it does not describe the contemplative activities of serious writers of English drama. It is rather, distinctly theatrical: describing the rowdy activities of