Shakespeare and Theatrical Patronage in Early Modern England

Shakespeare and Theatrical Patronage in Early Modern England PDF Author: Paul Whitfield White
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521034302
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Get Book Here

Book Description
During the past quarter of a century, the study of patronage-theatre relations in early modern England has developed considerably. This, however, is an extensive, wide-ranging and representative 2002 study of patronage as it relates to Shakespeare and the theatrical culture of his time. Twelve distinguished theatre historians address such questions as: What important functions did patronage have for the theatre during this period? How, in turn, did the theatre impact and represent patronage? Where do paying spectators and purchasers of printed drama fit into the discussion of patronage? The authors also show how patronage practices changed and developed from the early Tudor period to the years in which Shakespeare was the English theatre's leading artist. This important book will appeal to scholars of Renaissance social history as well as those who focus on Shakespeare and his playwriting contemporaries.

Shakespeare and Theatrical Patronage in Early Modern England

Shakespeare and Theatrical Patronage in Early Modern England PDF Author: Paul Whitfield White
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521034302
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Get Book Here

Book Description
During the past quarter of a century, the study of patronage-theatre relations in early modern England has developed considerably. This, however, is an extensive, wide-ranging and representative 2002 study of patronage as it relates to Shakespeare and the theatrical culture of his time. Twelve distinguished theatre historians address such questions as: What important functions did patronage have for the theatre during this period? How, in turn, did the theatre impact and represent patronage? Where do paying spectators and purchasers of printed drama fit into the discussion of patronage? The authors also show how patronage practices changed and developed from the early Tudor period to the years in which Shakespeare was the English theatre's leading artist. This important book will appeal to scholars of Renaissance social history as well as those who focus on Shakespeare and his playwriting contemporaries.

Region, Religion and Patronage

Region, Religion and Patronage PDF Author: Richard Dutton
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719063695
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book Here

Book Description
This groundbreaking book uses the possibility that Shakespeare began his theatrical career in Lancashire to open up a range of new contexts for reading the plays, and introduces readers to the non-metropolitan theater spaces which formed a vital part of early modern dramatic activity. Essays give a detailed picture of the contexts in which the apprentice dramatist would have worked, providing new insights into regional performance, touring theatre, the patronage of the Earls of Derby, and the purpose-built theater at Prescot.

Free Will

Free Will PDF Author: Richard Wilson
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526111047
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Get Book Here

Book Description
Free Will: Art and power on Shakespeare’s stage is a study of theatre and sovereignty that situates Shakespeare’s plays in the contraflow between two absolutisms of early modern England: the aesthetic and the political. Starting from the dramatist’s cringing relations with his princely patrons, Richard Wilson considers the ways in which this ‘bending author’ identifies freedom in failure and power in weakness by staging the endgames of a sovereignty that begs to be set free from itself. The arc of Shakespeare’s career becomes in this comprehensive new interpretation a sustained resistance to both the institutions of sacred kingship and literary autonomy that were emerging in his time. In a sequence of close material readings, Free Will shows how the plays instead turn command performances into celebrations of an art without sovereignty, which might ‘give delight’ but ‘hurt not’, and ‘leave not a rack behind’. Free Will is a profound rereading of Shakespeare, art and power that will contribute to thinking not only about the plays, but also about aesthetics, modernity, sovereignty and violence.

The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theatre

The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theatre PDF Author: Richard Dutton
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 9780199697861
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
An international team of scholars examines the theatrical world in which Shakespeare worked, tracing the social, political, and patronage pressures under which actors operated. They also explore the practicalities of playing: acquiring scripts, theatres, rehearsing, lighting, music, props, boy actors, and the role of women in an 'all-male' world.

Theatrical Convention and Audience Response in Early Modern Drama

Theatrical Convention and Audience Response in Early Modern Drama PDF Author: Jeremy Lopez
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139436678
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 251

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book gives a detailed and comprehensive survey of the diverse, theatrically vital formal conventions of the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Besides providing readings of plays such as Hamlet, Othello, Merchant of Venice, and Titus Andronicus, it also places Shakespeare emphatically within his own theatrical context, and focuses on the relationship between the demanding repertory system of the time and the conventions and content of the plays. Lopez argues that the limitations of the relatively bare stage and non-naturalistic mode of early modern theatre would have made the potential for failure very great, and he proposes that understanding this potential for failure is crucial for understanding the way in which the drama succeeded on stage. The book offers perspectives on familiar conventions such as the pun, the aside and the expository speech; and it works toward a definition of early modern theatrical genres based on the relationship between these well-known conventions and the incoherent experience of early modern theatrical narratives.

Textual Patronage in English Drama, 1570-1640

Textual Patronage in English Drama, 1570-1640 PDF Author: David M. Bergeron
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351148028
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 359

Get Book Here

Book Description
Through an investigation of the dedications and addresses from various printed plays of the English Renaissance, the author recuperates the richness of these prefaces and connects them to the practice of patronage. The prefatory matter discussed ranges from the printer John Day's address to readers (the first of its kind) in the 1570 edition of Gorboduc to Richard Brome's dedication to William Seymour and address to readers in his 1640 play, Antipodes. The study includes discussion of prefaces in plays by Shakespeare's contemporaries as well as Shakespeare himself, among them Marston, Jonson, and Heywood. The author uses these prefaces to show that English playwrights, printers and publishers looked in two directions, toward aristocrats and toward a reading public, in order to secure status for and dissemination of dramatic texts. The author points out that dedications and addresses to readers constitute obvious signs that printers, publishers and playwrights in the period increasingly saw these dramatic texts as occupying a rightful place in the humanistic and commercial endeavor of book production.

Heterodox Shakespeare

Heterodox Shakespeare PDF Author: Sean Benson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1683930266
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 175

Get Book Here

Book Description
The last quarter century has seen a “turn to religion” in Shakespeare studies as well as competing assertions by secular critics that Shakespeare’s plays reflect profound skepticism and even dismissal of the truth claims of revealed religion. This divide, though real, obscures the fact that Shakespeare often embeds both readings within the same play. This book is the first to propose an accommodation between religious and secular readings of the plays. Benson argues that Shakespeare was neither a mere debunker of religious orthodoxies nor their unquestioning champion. Religious inquiry in his plays is capacious enough to explore religious orthodoxy and unorthodoxy, everything from radical belief and the need to tolerate religious dissent to the possibility of God’s nonexistence. Shakespeare’s willingness to explore all aspects of religious and secular life, often simultaneously, is a mark of his tremendous intellectual range. Taking the heterodox as his focus, Benson examines five figures and ideas on the margins of the post-Reformation English church: nonconforming puritans such as Malvolio as well as physical revenants—the walking dead—whom Shakespeare alludes to and features so tantalizingly in Hamlet. Benson applies what Keats called Shakespeare’s “negative capability”—his ability to treat both sides of an issue equally and without prejudice—to show that Shakespeare considers possible worlds where God is intimately involved in the lives of persons and, in the very same play, a world in which God may not even exist. Benson demonstrates both that the range of Shakespeare’s investigation of religious questions is more daring than has previously been thought, and that the distinction between the sacred and the profane, between the orthodox and the unorthodox, is one that Shakespeare continually engages.

Acting Companies and their Plays in Shakespeare’s London

Acting Companies and their Plays in Shakespeare’s London PDF Author: Siobhan Keenan
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1472575679
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 283

Get Book Here

Book Description
Acting Companies and their Plays in Shakespeare's London explores the intimate and dynamic relationship between acting companies and playwrights in this seminal era in English theatre history. Siobhan Keenan's analysis includes chapters on the traditions and workings of contemporary acting companies, playwriting practices, stages and staging, audiences and patrons, each illustrated with detailed case studies of individual acting companies and their plays, including troupes such as Lady Elizabeth's players, 'Beeston's Boys' and the King's Men and works by Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, Brome and Heywood. We are accustomed to focusing on individual playwrights: Acting Companies and their Plays in Shakespeare's London makes the case that we also need to think about the companies for which dramatists wrote and with whose members they collaborated, if we wish to better understand the dramas of the English Renaissance stage.

From Playhouse to Printing House

From Playhouse to Printing House PDF Author: Douglas A. Brooks
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521034869
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Get Book Here

Book Description
Examines how Renaissance dramatists made the difficult transition from playwrights to published authors.

The Guild and Guild Buildings of Shakespeare's Stratford

The Guild and Guild Buildings of Shakespeare's Stratford PDF Author: J.R. Mulryne
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131702964X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book Here

Book Description
The guild buildings of Shakespeare’s Stratford represent a rare instance of a largely unchanged set of buildings which draw together the threads of the town’s civic life. With its multi-disciplinary perspectives on this remarkable group of buildings, this volume provides a comprehensive account of the religious, educational, legal, social and theatrical history of Stratford, focusing on the sixteenth century and Tudor Reformation. The essays interweave with one another to provide a map of the complex relationships between the buildings and their history. Opening with an investigation of the Guildhall, which served as the headquarters of the Guild of the Holy Cross until the Tudor Reformation, the book explores the building’s function as a centre of local government and community law and as a place of entertainment and education. It is beyond serious doubt that Shakespeare was a school boy here, and the many visits to the Guildhall by professional touring players during the latter half of the sixteenth-century may have prompted his acting and playwriting career. The Guildhall continues to this day to house a school for the education of secondary-level boys. The book considers educational provision during the mid sixteenth century as well as examining the interaction between touring players and the everyday politics and social life of Stratford. At the heart of the volume is archaeological and documentary research which uses up-to-date analysis and new dendrochronological investigations to interpret the buildings and their medieval wall paintings as well as proposing a possible location of the school before it transferred to the Guildhall. Together with extensive archival research into the town’s Court of Record which throws light on the commercial and social activities of the period, this rich body of research brings us closer to life as it was lived in Shakespeare’s Stratford.