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TAVARES-DISSERTATION-2016.Pdf ACTS OF IMAGINATION: CURATING THE EARLY ELIZABETHAN REPERTORIES, 1582–1594 BY ELIZABETH ELAINE TAVARES DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2016 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Curtis Perry, Co-Chair Associate Professor Andrea Ria Stevens, Co-Chair Associate Professor Lori Humphrey Newcomb Associate Professor Robert W. Barrett, Jr. ABSTRACT “Acts of Imagination” examines playing companies as the locus for the production of Renaissance drama. To date, narratives of Elizabethan theatre history tend to be playwright- and Shakespeare-centered; in response, I explore the companies operating during the under-examined dozen years of theatre before William Shakespeare entered the marketplace. The project thus takes as its organizing principle that of the period—the companies—rather than those categories privileged thereafter—authors and directors. Using the pioneering work of Scott McMillin and Sally-Beth MacLean as a point of departure, I expose how the repertory system galvanized innovation in playing techniques, playhouse design, and playtext production. Each chapter focuses on one season and one of four companies to expose the interconnections between thematic concerns and staging techniques that set a given company apart, as well as underscore the fact that it was repetition, revision, and collaboration as much as novelty that produced financial success in this theatrical marketplace. Attending to the collective process that was the Elizabethan theatre industry, I show the ways in which dramaturgical innovation and literary production were mutually constitutive drivers, as well as how this industry became the engine from which an oeuvre like Shakespeare's and the cult of authorship evolved. By sketching the contours of the Elizabethan theatre’s evolution, I widen our vantage of this dramatic landscape by providing unexamined, anonymous, and even “lost” plays cultural specificity and repertorial context. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am deeply grateful for the company of players who made this project possible. The faculty and library staff at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) invested in each stage of this process. To my advisors, Curtis Perry and Andrea Stevens, and committee members, Rob Barrett and Lori Newcomb, thanks are not enough for your generosity as teachers and in your critique, praise, and time. The majority of the research and writing for this project was generously sponsored by the Graduate College at UIUC under the auspices of their three-year Distinguished Fellowship. Without the numerous conference travel grants, summer research grants, and the Smalley Dissertation Completion Fellowship sponsored by the Department of English, this project would not have been possible. I am especially indebted to the staff of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library as well as the Literatures and Languages librarians Harriett Green and Stuart Albert, without whom REED, Malone Society reprints, and much of the material employed here would have remained a mystery. Several communities responded to pieces of this project at various stages. The members of the 2014 Mellon Academy for Advanced Study in the Renaissance and its organizers, Edward Muir and Regina Schwartz, were invaluable to its design. Jessica Apolloni, Stephen Cummins, Penelope Geng, Charles Keenan, Bianca Lopez, Caitlin McHugh, Colin Rose, Aaron Shapiro, James Sommerville, Leila Watkins, Marshelle Woodward—your kinship gave me the courage to pursue the hitherto irrecoverable. E latrocinio patrocinium. The 2015 Mellon Summer School for Theatre and Performance Research, its organizer, Martin Puchner, and the feedback from Minou Arjomand and Catriona Fallow provided a crucial entr’acte to the writing process. Members of the Department of English’s Early Modern Workshop—Catharine Gray, Marilyn Holguin, Ann iii Hubert, Diana Jaher, W. David Kay, Robert Markley, Patrick McGrath, Jessica Mercado, Feisal Mohamed, Carol Neely, Anthony Pollock, Carla Rosell, Sarah B. T. Thiel, and Jeremy Wear— are responsible for the rigor and imagination of several chapters. Weekly ablutions with my writing group compatriots S. Moon Cassinelli, Heather McLeer, Katherine Norcross, Sarah Sahn, Elyse Vigiletti, and Jessica Wong made the completion of this project possible. It is the individual players that were a part of this process cap-à-pie to whom I dedicate this dissertation. This includes Shawn Ballard, Esther Dettmar, Aja Gorham, Brittany Petersen, and Matthew Minicucci, who gave me respite and reassurance all along the way. Most importantly, I dedicate these pages to my family: my mother, who gave me a love of Shakespeare; my father, who gave me the will for this work; my brother, who kept me linked to home; and my grandparents, who first showed me the world both big and small. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES ···································································· vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION: OF MEN AND THEIR HEDGES ······························ 1 1.1 Theatrical Endeavors ········································································· 3 1.2 The Companies and the Canon ···························································· 10 1.3 Repertorial Curation ········································································ 32 1.4 House Styles ················································································· 40 CHAPTER 2: FADS AND FOREIGNERS: THE LORD STRANGE’S MEN AND THEIR MEDITERRANEAN PLAYS, 1592–1593 ··········································· 45 2.1 The Orient of the Rose: “Its strangeness, its difference, its exotic seriousness” ···· 47 2.2 Topicality and Its Mediterranean Variations: Three Cases ···························· 57 2.3 Coda: Ghosting Tamburlaine ······························································ 91 2.4 Playing with Others: The Cultivation of a Fad ········································· 96 CHAPTER 3: PRESENTATION AND POLYPHONY: THE QUEEN’S MEN AND THEIR HISTORY PLAYS, 1587–1588 ······················································· 99 3.1 A Troupe Divided; or, the Tumbler and the Turk ······································ 101 3.2 Polyphonic “We”: Three Kinds of Triptych ············································ 113 3.3 Regionalism and Rhetorics of Failure ··················································· 138 CHAPTER 4: PERSONNEL AND PROPERTIES: THE LORD ADMIRAL’S PLAYERS AND THEIR SUPPLEMENTED PLAYS, 1589–1590 ············································ 143 4.1 “Plays without alterations”: The Admiral’s Players and their Collaborators ······ 145 4.2 “To manage mightie things”: Three Cases of Supplemented Playing ·············· 167 4.3 “Very dutifullie obeyed”: Collaboration in/and the Admiral’s Players ············· 191 CHAPTER 5: SOUNDS AND SENNETS: FACTIONAL POLITICS AND THE LORD PEMBROKE’S PLAYERS, 1597–1598 ······································· 196 5.1 A Lost Case ················································································· 199 5.2 A Duplicate Case ··········································································· 222 5.3 Comparative Cases ········································································· 233 BIBLIOGRAPHY ······················································································· 237 APPENDIX A: PLAY SUMMARIES BY COMPANY, 1582–1594 ···························· 252 v LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES TABLE 2.1: The Lord Strange’s repertory holdings, 1592/3 ······································· 62 TABLE 4.1: Joint performances with the Lord Admiral’s Men, 1582–1594 ···················· 152 * * * FIGURE 1.1: The 1594, 1600, and 1611 title pages to Titus Andronicus ··························· 5 FIGURE 1.2: Total play survival, 1576–1642 ························································ 25 FIGURE 1.3: Lord Admiral’s Men playtext survival by career threshold ························ 27 FIGURE 1.4: Lord Admiral’s Men playtext survival by monarchal regime ····················· 28 FIGURE 1.5: Lord Admiral’s Men playtext survival by genre ····································· 29 FIGURE 2.1: Detail of Sam Wanamaker Globe Theatre roof paintings (2010) ················· 51 FIGURE 2.2: Arend van Buchell’s reproduction of Johannes de Witt’s sketch of the Swan playhouse (c.1596) ······················································································· 53 FIGURE 2.3: Louis Wann, grouped chronology of “oriental” Elizabethan plays, 1579– 1642 ········································································································ 61 FIGURE 2.4: Frontispiece from the first volume of John Poleman’s All the famous Battels that haue bene fought in our age throughout the world (1578) ·········································· 66 FIGURE 3.1: ArcGIS map of known Queen’s midlands branch performance locations, 1583– 1594 ······································································································· 107 FIGURE 3.2: ArcGIS map of known Queen’s northern branch performance locations, 1583– 1594 ······································································································· 107 FIGURE 3.3: Jan van Belchamp’s triptych, “The Great Picture” (1646) ························ 115 FIGURE 3.4: The dramatis personæ from Robert Wilson’s The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London (1590) ························································································
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