Playhouse Wills, 1558-1642

Playhouse Wills, 1558-1642 PDF Author: E. A. J. Honigmann
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719030161
Category : Theater
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
A collection of over one hundred wills left by those who participated in the life of the theatre - from actors and dramatists to carpenters and costumiers. The wills not only offer vital historical evidence but are also important human documents, testaments to the social, financial, religious and sentimental lives of Shakespeare's contemporaries. Of the wills reprinted here, one third were newly discovered, and many of the rest printed for the first time from the original wills, thus preserving the vacillations and abandoned intentions of the testators. -- back cover.

Playhouse Wills, 1558-1642

Playhouse Wills, 1558-1642 PDF Author: E. A. J. Honigmann
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719030161
Category : Theater
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
A collection of over one hundred wills left by those who participated in the life of the theatre - from actors and dramatists to carpenters and costumiers. The wills not only offer vital historical evidence but are also important human documents, testaments to the social, financial, religious and sentimental lives of Shakespeare's contemporaries. Of the wills reprinted here, one third were newly discovered, and many of the rest printed for the first time from the original wills, thus preserving the vacillations and abandoned intentions of the testators. -- back cover.

A Jacobean Company and its Playhouse

A Jacobean Company and its Playhouse PDF Author: Eva Griffith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107041880
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
The first history of the Queen's Servants, parallel players to Shakespeare's company, and their playhouse, The Red Bull.

Shakespeare's Money

Shakespeare's Money PDF Author: Robert Bearman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191077054
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
There is no doubting Shakespeare's literary genius, immortalised in his published work. However, statements along these lines are frequently followed by laments of how little is known about this life. This is true if we wish to know about Shakespeare's movements on even a month-by-month basis, or about his working practices and relationships with his theatrical fellows. However, too great an emphasis on this dearth of material not only leads to ill-informed comment that this is somehow 'suspicious' but also tends to downgrade the importance of what material has survived, often dismissed instead simply as evidence of his business dealings which have little bearing on his creative work. However, this material does at least help us to evaluate how successful Shakespeare was in earning a living in a profession which, in his day, was far from mainstream. By calculating his income from theatrical sources and exploring how this affected his financial circumstances and his ability to invest for his and his family's security, we can come to a better understanding of his social standing at different periods in his life, the most obvious evidence to his late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century contemporaries of his success. Shakespeare undoubtedly died a man of comfortable means, but, as this book demonstrates, there is little to justify claims that he died possessed of great wealth. The circumstances of his daughters' marriages are a sufficient indication that he had not achieved true gentlemanly status. Other evidence suggests that he had not broken convincingly into the ranks of leading figures even of a small market town. Moreover, following a period of increasing prosperity, these 'business records' also reflect a declining income during the last ten years or so of his life and of his efforts to safeguard his assets. On the other hand, when compared with his father's business failure, mainly the result of a loss of credit, it is clear that, consciously or unconsciously, Shakespeare had the good sense or foresight not to over-reach himself.

Shakespeare Survey

Shakespeare Survey PDF Author: Stanley Wells
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521523868
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
The first fifty volumes of this yearbook of Shakespeare studies are being reissued in paperback.

William Shakespeare: A Brief Life

William Shakespeare: A Brief Life PDF Author: Paul Menzer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350156779
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
This engaging and fresh biography begins by examining how Shakespeare's life turns into myth so comfortably as to seduce even the most sceptical scholar. The early departure, the late return. Public success, private loss. A twilight of plays about family reunions, a death at home in the biggest house in town, the one he walked by as a schoolboy and eyed with envy, or at least ambition. Shakespeare led an orbital life, everything returned to where it began. He even had the dramatic good sense to die on his birthday. One of the appealing dynamics of the Shakespeare myth is the contrast of his humble beginnings and his lofty achievements, persuading us that genius might blossom anywhere. William Shakespeare: A Brief Life honours these myths, but also explores some of the mysteries: why Shakespeare left Stratford, who he ran with in London, why he put down his pen and at last came home again. Ultimately, the book explores the compelling contrast between the mere fifty two years Shakespeare lived, with the prolonged after lives of his work and his story, which show no sign of ending.

Children of the Queen's Revels

Children of the Queen's Revels PDF Author: Lucy Munro
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521843560
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
History of boy actors in England during the Elizabethan Age.

Shakespeare on the Record

Shakespeare on the Record PDF Author: Hannah Leah Crummé
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350003530
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Shakespeare on Record is a unique guide to major Shakespeare discoveries and the archival insight that made them possible. With contributions from experts at The National Archives, the Folger Shakespeare Library and leading universities, the book explores and explains the bureaucratic processes and governmental practices that shaped life and records in Renaissance England – making it a key resource for both Shakespeare scholars and researchers of early modern lives. Chapters examine key documents concerning property, the law, coats of arms and investments, which relate to Shakespeare's lives in both Stratford and London. Several of The National Archives' collection of over 120 documents which illuminate Shakespeare's life are profiled here for the first time. Richly illustrated throughout, this is a key resource for both Shakespeare scholars and researchers of early modern lives.

Elizabethan Theater

Elizabethan Theater PDF Author: R. B. Parker
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
ISBN: 9780874135879
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Elizabethan Theater is a collection of essays offered in celebration of the long career of Samuel Schoenbaum. Throughout his career as biographer, bibliographer, historian, critic, and editor of scholarly journals, he has greatly enriched our appreciation of Shakespeare and his fellows. These essays celebrate the many ways in which he has enhanced our understanding through his skill in balancing historical contexts with a recognition and respect for the importance of individual authorship. Distinguished scholars from many countries, representing many points of view, have chosen to honor Schoenbaum by contributing essays that explore the four overlapping areas with which his own research has mainly been concerned: biographical scholarship, the concept of authorship, the hand of the author perceived within the play, and the multiple historical contexts that helped to determine how Elizabethan plays were written and received.

Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (Anniversary Edition)

Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (Anniversary Edition) PDF Author: Stephen Greenblatt
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393079848
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
Named One of Esquire's 50 Best Biographies of All Time The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, reissued with a new afterword for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. A young man from a small provincial town moves to London in the late 1580s and, in a remarkably short time, becomes the greatest playwright not of his age alone but of all time. How is an achievement of this magnitude to be explained? Stephen Greenblatt brings us down to earth to see, hear, and feel how an acutely sensitive and talented boy, surrounded by the rich tapestry of Elizabethan life, could have become the world’s greatest playwright.

Owning William Shakespeare

Owning William Shakespeare PDF Author: James J. Marino
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812205774
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Copyright is by no means the only device for asserting ownership of a work. Some writers, including playwrights in the early modern period, did not even view print copyright as the most important of their authorial rights. A rich vein of recent scholarship has examined the interaction between royal monopolies, which have been identified with later notions of intrinsic authorial ownership, and the internal copy registration practices of the English book trades. Yet this dialogue was but one part of a still more complicated conversation in early modern England, James J. Marino argues; other customs and other sets of professional demands were at least as important, most strikingly in the exercise of the performance rights of plays. In Owning William Shakespeare James Marino explores the actors' system of intellectual property as something fundamentally different from the property regimes exercised by the London printers or the royal monopolists. Focusing on Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, King Lear, and other works, he demonstrates how Shakespeare's acting company asserted ownership of its plays through intense rewriting combined with progressively insistent attribution to Shakespeare. The familiar versions of these plays were created through ongoing revision in the theater, a process that did not necessarily begin with Shakespeare's original manuscript or end when he died. An ascription by the company of any play to "Shakespeare" did not imply that it was following a fixed, authorial text; rather, Marino writes, it indicates an attempt to maintain exclusive control over a set of open-ended, theatrically revised scripts. Combining theater history, textual studies, and literary theory, Owning William Shakespeare rethinks both the way Shakespeare's plays were created and the way they came to be known as his. It overturns a century of scholarship aimed at re-creating the playwright's lost manuscripts, focusing instead on the way the plays continued to live and grow onstage.