DOCSLIB.ORG

Textual and Narrative Space in Professional Dramas in Early Modern England

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Textual and Narrative Space in Professional Dramas in Early Modern England Textual and Narrative Space in Professional Dramas in Early Modern England by Te-Han Yeh A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham For the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY The Shakespeare Institute Department of English The University of Birmingham September 2011 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract This thesis aims to examine the varied notions of space in early modern play-texts as well as to challenge the assumed text-space relationship that has been the foundation of various scholarly approaches towards early modern theatrical practice, including a Shakespeare-centred historiography and theatre reconstruction carried out by scholars such as Andrew Gurr and Richard Hosley and contemporary editorial practices that appear to reconstruct early modern performances scenographically through annotations and editorial interventions. In order to depart from such Shakespeare-centred and London-biased architectural determinism, the thesis will adopt a repertory approach to the Queen’s Men, a methodology that emphasises the materiality of the play books and an author-function approach to the plays associated with Robert Greene in order to explore the alternatives to a conventional architectural and scenographic theatre reconstruction based primarily on the literary analysis of play-texts. In addition to challenging the assumption of an interchangeable relationship between play-texts, performance and space, this thesis aims to demonstrate how the concept of space within a play-text will be ultimately an issue of dramaturgy, determined and defined by the diverse dramatic forces in this period and the idiosyncratic styles of their narrative. Acknowledgement This thesis has benefited tremendously from the guidance of my supervisor Kate McLuskie whose generosity in sharing ideas and academic input help the project take shape. Most of all, I am incredibly grateful for my family and my husband who have shown the greatest support. Without their help, this project would not have been possible. Contents Introduction 1 The Notion of Space 3 The Stage-Centred Approach and Text-based Historiography 7 in the Study of Early Modern Theatre Space in Typography: the Role of Printers 20 Space of Reading: Reconsidering Weimann’s Locus and Platea 22 Chapter One A History of History: Contemporary Historiographical Approaches to Early Modern Theatrical Space 27 The Historiography of Early Modern Theatre History 27 Stage Directions and Theatrical Space in Early Modern Printed Texts: An Architectural Reconstruction 37 Chapter Two Locus, Personnel and Texts 48 Part 1 Theatre Reconstruction through Play-texts Texts, Performance and Editorial Intervention: a Scenographic Reconstruction 49 Text, Stage and 2 Henry VI 55 – On Entrances and Exits 58 – Bed, Curtains and Theatricality 64 Textual Authority and Monarchical Authority 68 Part 2 Theatre Reconstruction without Plays: Reading REED 77 Chapter Three The Queen’s Men and their Spatial Practice: a Repertory Approach 96 The Queen’s Men’s Repertory and the Issue of Provenance 97 Stage Directions and Architectural Reconstruction: Texts and Venues 104 Promptbook, Play-text, and Early Modern Performance 112 Props, Space and Spectacles 115 Spectacles and Spatial Allegory 120 – Fire and Flame 121 – Lightning as Fire 123 – Historical Account on the Effect of Fire 124 – Spectacles and Speaking Heads 126 Allegorical Spatial Practice 130 Chapter Four Space in Typography: Theatrical Title Pages, Woodcuts and the Case of Thomas Creede 137 Theatrical Space and Theatrical Title Pages: Printers’ and Publishers’ Role 140 Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay and the 1630 Woodcut 148 Thomas Creede and his Theatrical Output 157 Thomas Creede’s Theatrical Title Pages 159 A Note on the Textural Variants in Creede’s Play Books 164 A Looking Glass for London and England: 166 a Typographical and Narrative Space Chapter Five Space of Narrative and the Transgression of Spatial Practices 186 The Interplay between the Mimetic and Diegetic Space in Early Modern Plays 187 Locus and Platea Reconsidered 200 Robert Greene and the Transgression of Narrative Space 208 Conclusion 231 Appendix A: Property Bills 233 Appendix B: A List of Plays Printed by Thomas Creede 240 Bibliography Early Editions of Plays 245 Modern and Critical Editions of Plays 250 Other Early Modern Printed Materials 252 Supporting Materials 253 Abbreviations DEEP Database of Early English Playbooks DNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography ESTC English Short Title Catalogue OED Oxford English Dictionary REED Records of Early English Drama SQM Shakespeare and the Queen’s Men Project Introduction The purpose of this thesis is to explore the relationship between early modern drama and space by examining the varieties of space and spatial practices that have been reconstructed or are yet to be identified with the help of early modern play-texts and play books. I will look into the reasons why a large number of scholarly approaches to theatre reconstruction tend to be closely associated with the literary analysis of play-texts, and examine the degree to which these methodologies are problematised by their shared assumption of a generic model of the early modern space – retrievable from an abstracted model of an Elizabethan playhouse by decoding the physical elements in early printed play-texts and revolving primarily around Shakespeare and his playing company. I will also examine alternative approaches to such kinds of spatial reconstructions which remove the emphasis on the literary analysis of a dramatic text and see the extent to which the results and underlying assumptions of these diverse disciplines vary from or remain akin to one another. The methodologies that will be examined to look at early modern spatial practice include: (a) A London-centred and author-based methodology such as the historiography of the early modern theatre carried out by Andrew Gurr, Richard Hosley and Glynn Wickham; (b) The editorial practice on early modern play-texts by scholars such as W. W. Greg, R. B. McKerrow and Stanley Wells. By examining the above methodologies, I hope to demonstrate how their approaches are problematised by their underlying assumption of an interchangeable relationship between play-text and space as well as a shared theatre model based mainly on the repertoire of Shakespeare and his company. In addition, I will also employ the 1 following approaches in order to look at the alternatives to a London-centred and Shakespeare-oriented model. These include: (a) Practices such as the REED (Record of Early English Drama) project, which investigates playing spaces in early modern England outside London and marks a departure from a Shakespeare-centred and play-text based methodology on the history of early modern theatre. (b) A repertory approach conducted by scholars such as McMillin and MacLean in The Queen’s Men and their Plays as well as Lucy Munro whose Children of the Queen’s Revels also has a new emphasis on playing companies instead of playwrights, (c) An approach that focus on para-textual materials and mise-en-page of the early modern play books and examine the extent to which theatre and performance is imagined and shaped by the printers and publishers of the books – a scholarly approach that can be observed in the works of Zachary Lesser, Tiffany Stern and Maureen Bell etc., (d) Finally, an author-function and author-centred approach to look at the extent to which the diverse and varied dramatic forces in early modern England could create different styles of spatial practices through their idiosyncratic choices of dramaturgy. My intention is to cover the full range of traditional and recent critical practices and resources in order to examine the underlying problems and feasibility of the conventional theatre model based on the works of Hosley and Gurr and to see the degree to which the materiality of a play book as well as the model of a playing business based on the accounts of REED could help us to understand the concept of space and spatial practice of this period. Eventually, I will go back to an author-centred approach on Robert Greene and demonstrate how his idiosyncratic choice of dramaturgy exhibits a unique style of spatial division that is distinctive from Shakespeare’s model. Before I go on to examine and attempt to demystify the 2 relationship between play-texts and theatrical space with the above methodologies, it is important to clarify the notions of space, what constitutes a theatrical space in these separate disciplines, how these diverse concepts of space will be subsequently employed in this thesis, the significance and history of these academic approaches in shaping our understanding of the early modern theatre and the underlying issues of these approaches. The Notion of Space Space, according to Oxford English Dictionary, denotes meanings that can be briefly divided into two major categories: it indicates “time or duration” and also carries geometrical meaning which signifies “area
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Download Download
    Early Theatre 9.2 Issues in Review Lucy Munro, Anne Lancashire, John Astington, and Marta Straznicky Popular Theatre and the Red Bull Governing the Pen to the Capacity of the Stage: Reading the Red Bull and Clerkenwell In his introduction to Early Theatre’s Issues in Review segment ‘Reading the Elizabethan Acting Companies’, published in 2001, Scott McMillin called for an approach to the study of early modern drama which takes theatre companies as ‘the organizing units of dramatic production’. Such an approach will, he suggests, entail reading plays ‘more fully than we have been trained to do, taking them not as authorial texts but as performed texts, seeing them as collaborative endeavours which involve the writers and dozens of other theatre people, and placing the staged plays in a social network to which both the players and audiences – perhaps even the playwrights – belonged’.1 We present here a variation on this approach: three essays that focus on the Red Bull theatre and its Clerkenwell locality. Rather than focusing on individual companies, we take the playhouse and location as our organising principle. Nonetheless, we are dealing with precisely the kind of decentring activity that McMillin had in mind, examining early drama through collaborative performance, through performance styles and audience taste, and through the presentation of a theatrical repertory in print. Each essay deals with a different ‘social network’: Anne Lancashire re-examines the evidence for the London Clerkenwell play, a multi-day biblical play performed by clerks in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries; John Astington takes a look at acting traditions and repertory composition at the Red Bull and its fellow in the northern suburbs, Golden Lane’s Fortune playhouse; and Marta Straznicky looks at questions relating to the audience for Red Bull plays in the playhouse and the print-shop.
    [Show full text]
  • Repertory and Riot: the Relocation of Plays from the Red Bull to the Cockpit Stage
    132 Issues in Review 28 Knutson, Playing Companies and Commerce, 62. 29 Leggatt, Jacobean Public Theatre, 4. Repertory and Riot: The Relocation of Plays from the Red Bull to the Cockpit Stage On 4 March 1617 the newly built Cockpit playhouse in Drury Lane was assailed by a band of ‘lewde and loose persons, apprentices and others’.1 Writ- ing four days after the event, Edward Sherbourne claimed that between three and four thousand apprentices had mobilized themselves, ‘wounded divers of the players, broke open their trunckes, & whatt apparreil, bookes, or other things they found, they burnt & cutt in peeces; & not content herewith, gott on the top of the house, & untiled it’.2 Consequences were not limited to loss of property. Sherbourne elaborates that ‘one prentise was slaine, being shott throughe the head with a pistoll, & many other of their fellowes were sore hurt’.3 On the same day, John Chamberlain wrote to Dudley Carleton of the disorder in town, adding that the players of Queen Anne’s Men, the current occupants of the Cockpit, ‘defended themselves as well as they could and slew three of them [the rioters] with shot, and hurt divers’.4 The gravity of the situation, at least as far as city authorities were concerned, is clear. In a letter to the lord mayor and aldermen of London, it was reported that ‘there were diverse people slayne, and others hurt and wounded’. Later that month, the privy council ordered security and vigilance against the behaviour of citizens and apprentices to be tightened.5 A number of historical narratives have prioritized the riot, which took place on Shrove Tuesday that year.
    [Show full text]
  • From Sidney to Heywood: the Social Status of Commercial Theatre in Early Modern London
    From Sidney to Heywood: the social status of commercial theatre in early modern London Romola Nuttall (King’s College London, UK) The Literary London Journal, Volume 14 Number 1 (Spring 2017) Abstract Thomas Heywood’s Apology for Actors (written c. 1608, published 1612) is one of the only stand-alone, printed deFences of the proFessional theatre to emerge from the early modern period. Even more significantly, it is ‘the only contemporary complete text we have – by an early modern actor about early modern actors’ (Griffith 191). This is rather surprising considering how famous playwrights and drama of that period have become, but it is revealing of attitudes towards the profession and the stage at the turn of the sixteenth century. Religious concerns Formed a central part of the heated public debate which contested the social value oF proFessional drama during the early modern era. Claims against the literary status of work produced for the commercial stage were also frequently levelled against the theatre from within the establishment, a prominent example being Sir Philip Sidney’s Defence of Poesie (written c. 1579, published 1595). Considering Heywood’s Apology in relation to Sidney’s Defence, and thinking particularly about the ways these treatises appropriate the classical idea oF mimesis and the consequent social value of literature, gives fresh insight into the changing status of drama in Shakespeare’s lifetime and how attitudes towards commercial theatre developed between the 1570s and 1610s. The following article explores these ideas within the framework of the London in which Heywood and his acting company lived and worked.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction
    introduction Romance is a twilight zone in studies of late sixteenth-century literary genres in England. Half-way between the nostalgia of medieval chivalry and the enterprising spirit of early modern exploration, piracy and com- merce as preludes to a future empire, it is both very old-fashioned and innovatively modern. Appearing in narrative as well as in dramatic forms, romance lays simultaneous claims to history and imagination, which were not necessarily in opposition in the period, and caters for a readership of servants and citizens while equally fi nding its way into Spenserian epic, Sidneyan pastoral or even late Shakespearian tragicomedy and Miltonian poetry. The three plays grouped in this volume are early modern attempts at conquering that twilight zone in a context of expanding contacts with Muslim lands around the Mediterranean. romance and conquest in early modern england ‘The structural core of all fi ction’ for Northrop Frye, who sees it as a means to translate mythical archetypes into human experience, 1 romance is also ‘a notoriously slippery category’, as Barbara Fuchs warns. 2 The basic defi nition with which Helen Cooper starts her authoritative study of the genre is a primarily narrative fi ction in the vernacular which appears from the twelfth century onward, characterised by exotic settings, distant in time and/or place, concerned with love and/or chivalry, and involving high-ranking individuals engaged in some ideal quest. It may include such recurrent patterns as encounters with the supernatural, obscured identities or miraculous conversions. 3 Patricia Parker’s earlier deconstructionist approach complicates this defi nition by insisting on the proliferating digressions which form the structure of romance and defer its closure and collective coherence.
    [Show full text]
  • The Dramaturgy of Thomas Heywood 1594-1613 Carson, R
    The dramaturgy of Thomas Heywood 1594-1613 Carson, R. Neil The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author For additional information about this publication click this link. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/jspui/handle/123456789/1390 Information about this research object was correct at the time of download; we occasionally make corrections to records, please therefore check the published record when citing. For more information contact [email protected] THE DRAMATURGYOF THOMAS HEYWOOD 1594-1613 THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR JANUARY, 1974 OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE R. NEIL CARSON UNIVERSITY OF LONDON WESTFIELD COLLEGE I)IN 1 ABSTRACT This dissertation is an attempt to describe the characteristics of Thomas Heywood's dramatic style. The study is divided into three parts. The first deals with the playwright's theatrical career and discusses how his practical experience as actor and sharer might have affected his technique as a dramatic writer. The second part defines the scope of the investigation and contains the bulk of the analysis of Heywood's plays. My approach to the mechanics of playwriting is both practical and theoretical. I have attempted to come to an understanding of the technicalities of Heywood's craftsmanship by studying the changes he made in Sir Thomas Moore and in the sources he used for his plays. At the same time, I have tried to comprehend the aesthetic framework within which he worked by referring to the critical ideas of the period and especially to opinions expressed by Heywood him- self in An Apology for Actors and elsewhere.
    [Show full text]
  • An A2 Timeline of the London Stage Between 1660 and 1737
    1660-61 1659-60 1661-62 1662-63 1663-64 1664-65 1665-66 1666-67 William Beeston The United Company The Duke’s Company The Duke’s Company The Duke’s Company @ Salisbury Court Sir William Davenant Sir William Davenant Sir William Davenant Sir William Davenant The Duke’s Company The Duke’s Company & Thomas Killigrew @ Salisbury Court @Lincoln’s Inn Fields @ Lincoln’s Inn Fields Sir William Davenant Sir William Davenant Rhodes’s Company @ The Cockpit, Drury Lane @ Red Bull Theatre @ Lincoln’s Inn Fields @ Lincoln’s Inn Fields George Jolly John Rhodes @ Salisbury Court @ The Cockpit, Drury Lane @ The Cockpit, Drury Lane The King’s Company The King’s Company PLAGUE The King’s Company The King’s Company The King’s Company Thomas Killigrew Thomas Killigrew June 1665-October 1666 Anthony Turner Thomas Killigrew Thomas Killigrew Thomas Killigrew @ Vere Street Theatre @ Vere Street Theatre & Edward Shatterell @ Red Bull Theatre @ Bridges Street Theatre @ Bridges Street Theatre @ The Cockpit, Drury Lane @ Bridges Street Theatre, GREAT FIRE @ Red Bull Theatre Drury Lane (from 7/5/1663) The Red Bull Players The Nursery @ The Cockpit, Drury Lane September 1666 @ Red Bull Theatre George Jolly @ Hatton Garden 1676-77 1675-76 1674-75 1673-74 1672-73 1671-72 1670-71 1669-70 1668-69 1667-68 The Duke’s Company The Duke’s Company The Duke’s Company The Duke’s Company Thomas Betterton & William Henry Harrison and Thomas Henry Harrison & Thomas Sir William Davenant Smith for the Davenant Betterton for the Davenant Betterton for the Davenant @ Lincoln’s Inn Fields
    [Show full text]
  • The First Quarto of King Henry V Edited by Andrew Gurr Excerpt More Information
    Cambridge University Press 0521623367 - The First Quarto of King Henry V Edited by Andrew Gurr Excerpt More information 1 Introduction INTRODUCTION The significance of the quarto text of Henry V The character of the text of Henry V printed in the First Folio of 1623 (f) is not seriously in doubt. As the NCS edition and others argue, it was set from an authorial manuscript that had not been through the developmental process of emendation for performance. The version printed in 1600 (q), however, tells a different story. It contains several features that show radical corrections made to the f text either in the course of preparing the play for performance or during its first run on stage. It cuts the total number of lines by a half, eliminating entire scenes and transposing others, and shortens or cuts all the longer speeches. The speed with which it came to the press only a year after its first staging is a mark both of its proximity to the text performed by the company that owned it and of its authority as an official version. Between 1598 and 1600 ten plays owned by Shakespeare’s company came into print, seven of them Shakespeare’s own. With the sole exception of the Henry V quarto, and Jonson’s Every Man Out of his Humour, which Jonson gave to the press himself, all of them were at least three years old. In the speed of its delivery to the press, q Henry V is unique even among the so-called ‘bad’ quartos. What its text can tell us about its origins and its intended function is uniquely valuable for an understanding of what Shakespeare’s company did to adapt the play-manuscripts he sold to them for staging.
    [Show full text]
  • Redating Pericles: a Re-Examination of Shakespeare’S
    REDATING PERICLES: A RE-EXAMINATION OF SHAKESPEARE’S PERICLES AS AN ELIZABETHAN PLAY A THESIS IN Theatre Presented to the Faculty of the University of Missouri-Kansas City in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree MASTER OF ARTS by Michelle Elaine Stelting University of Missouri Kansas City December 2015 © 2015 MICHELLE ELAINE STELTING ALL RIGHTS RESERVED REDATING PERICLES: A RE-EXAMINATION OF SHAKESPEARE’S PERICLES AS AN ELIZABETHAN PLAY Michelle Elaine Stelting, Candidate for the Master of Arts Degree University of Missouri-Kansas City, 2015 ABSTRACT Pericles's apparent inferiority to Shakespeare’s mature works raises many questions for scholars. Was Shakespeare collaborating with an inferior playwright or playwrights? Did he allow so many corrupt printed versions of his works after 1604 out of indifference? Re-dating Pericles from the Jacobean to the Elizabethan era answers these questions and reveals previously unexamined connections between topical references in Pericles and events and personalities in the court of Elizabeth I: John Dee, Philip Sidney, Edward de Vere, and many others. The tournament impresas, alchemical symbolism of the story, and its lunar and astronomical imagery suggest Pericles was written long before 1608. Finally, Shakespeare’s focus on father-daughter relationships, and the importance of Marina, the daughter, as the heroine of the story, point to Pericles as written for a young girl. This thesis uses topical references, Shakespeare’s anachronisms, Shakespeare’s sources, stylometry and textual analysis, as well as Henslowe’s diary, the Stationers' Register, and other contemporary documentary evidence to determine whether there may have been versions of Pericles circulating before the accepted date of 1608.
    [Show full text]
  • FRONT9 2.CHP:Corel VENTURA
    144 Issues in Review The Red Bull Repertory in Print, 1605–60 With remarkable consistency throughout the early modern period, Red Bull playgoers are characterized as unlettered, ignorant, or possessed of a crass literary sensibility. Interestingly, though, they are also imagined as avid readers: Webster’s well-known depiction, following the failure at the Red Bull of his The White Devil, declares that ‘most of the people that come to that Play-house, resemble those ignorant asses (who visiting Stationers shoppes their use is not to inquire for good bookes, but new bookes).’1 Webster’s association of Red Bull spectators with book-buyers suggests that the persistent representations of the low literacy of this audience may obscure the extent to which the famously spectacle-driven Red Bull repertory intersects with early modern print culture. The number of Red Bull plays that were published with an explicit theatrical attribution, and more importantly the similarities in design and typography between them and plays belonging to the more elite indoor repertories, would seem to bear this out. As reading material, the Red Bull plays indicate that a seemingly ‘low’ or popular theatrical repertory is not sufficient evidence of the social or educational make-up of its audience. It is crucial at the outset to confront the publication figures that have led scholars to assume that a Red Bull attribution on the title page of a play quarto did not have any meaningful currency in early modern print culture: of the roughly 400 editions of plays published
    [Show full text]
  • Det. 1.2.2 Quartos 1594-1609.Pdf
    author registered year of title printer stationer value editions edition Anon. 6 February 1594 to John 1594 The most lamentable Romaine tragedie of Titus Iohn Danter Edward White & "rather good" 1600, 1611 Danter Andronicus as it was plaide by the Right Honourable Thomas Millington the Earle of Darbie, Earle of Pembrooke, and Earle of Sussex their seruants Anon. 2 May 1594 1594 A Pleasant Conceited Historie, Called the Taming of Peter Short Cuthbert Burby bad a Shrew. As it was sundry times acted by the Right honorable the Earle of Pembrook his seruants. Anon. 12 March 1594 to Thomas 1594 The First Part of the Contention Betwixt the Two Thomas Creede Thomas Millington bad 1600 Millington Famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster . [Henry VI Part 2] Anon. 1595 The true tragedie of Richard Duke of York , and P. S. [Peter Short] Thomas Millington bad 1600 the death of good King Henrie the Sixt, with the whole contention betweene the two houses Lancaster and Yorke, as it was sundrie times acted by the Right Honourable the Earle of Pembrooke his seruants [Henry VI Part 3] Anon. 1597 An excellent conceited tragedie of Romeo and Iuliet. Iohn Danter [and bad As it hath been often (with great applause) plaid Edward Allde] publiquely, by the Right Honourable the L. of Hunsdon his seruants Anon. 29 August 1597 to Andrew 1597 The tragedie of King Richard the second. As it hath Valentine Simmes Andrew Wise "rather good" Wise been publikely acted by the Right Honourable the Lorde Chamberlaine his seruants. William Shake-speare [29 Aug 1597] 1598 The tragedie of King Richard the second.
    [Show full text]
  • A Rare Early Quarto of Shakespeare's Richard III William Shakespeare
    A rare early quarto of Shakespeare’s Richard III William Shakespeare, Richard III. London: Mathew Law, 1605. 7 1/4 inches x 5 1/4 inches (184 mm x 133 mm), [92] pages, A–L4 M2. THE | TRAGEDIE | of King Richard | the third. | Conteining his treacherous Plots against his brother | Clarence : the pittifull murther of his innocent Ne- | phewes : his tyrannicall vsurpation : with the | whole course of his detested life, and | most deserued death. | As it hath bin lately Acted by the Right Honourable | the Lord Chamberlaine his seruants. | Newly augmented, | By William Shake-speare. | [Creede’s device] | LONDON, | Printed by Thomas Creede, | and are to be sold by Mathew | Lawe, dwelling in Paules Church-yard, at the Signe | of the Foxe, neare S. Austins gate, 1605. Shakespeare’s quartos, so named because of their format (a single sheet folded twice, creating four leaves or eight pages), are the first printed representations of his plays and, as none of the plays survives in manuscript, of great importance to Shakespeare scholarship. Only twenty-one of Shakespeare’s plays were published in quarto before the closure of the theaters and outbreak of civil war in 1642. These quartos were printed from either Shakespeare’s “foul papers” (a draft with notations and changes that was given in sections to actors for their respective roles); from “fair copies” created from foul papers that presented the entire action of the play; from promptbooks, essentially fair copies annotated and expanded by the author and acting company to clarify stage directions, sound effects, etc.; or from a previously published quarto edition.
    [Show full text]
  • The Queen's Servants at the Red Bull Theatre (C.1605–1619)
    Eva Griffith, A Jacobean Company and its Playhouse: The Queen’s Servants at the Red Bull Theatre (c.1605–1619) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). xiv+292 pp. ISBN 978 1 1070 4188 2. Tom Rutter University of Sheffield [email protected] In recent years, a number of critics and theatre historians have challenged a once- widespread view of the Red Bull playhouse in Clerkenwell as a downmarket venue playing old-fashioned, rowdy fare to socially inferior and aesthetically unsophisticated audiences. Essays collected in a special section of Early Theatre, 9.2 offered revisionist views, as did Mark Bayer’s Theatre, Community and Cultural Engagement in Jacobean London (2011). Eva Griffith’s book, which complements her previously published research on the playhouse, is a significant contribution to this body of work; but more than that, it should be a vital starting point for anyone working on the Red Bull and on the Queen’s Men, who performed there until 1619. In her opening chapter, Griffith sketches out some of the history of Clerkenwell, and its long association with dramatic performance. She details the acquisition of property near St John’s Priory by Thomas Seckford in 1573, and his later subletting to Eustace Bedingfeld of a parcel of land including the future Red Bull site (which subsequently passed to his widow Anne). Griffith is adept at reconstructing early modern social networks: that Anne’s brother was associated with the theatre owner Philip Henslowe, for example; that Eustace was the nephew of the future Queen Elizabeth’s gaoler Henry Bedingfeld, unflatteringly depicted in the Red Bull play If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody, Part I; that Thomas Seckford’s brother Henry was a servant of Bedingfeld in the 1550s, and would by the 1580s be working in the Revels Office.
    [Show full text]