Shakespeare's Theatre: A History

ISBN-13: 9781405115131 / Angielski / Twarda / 2018 / 384 str.

Dutton, Richard

Opis

Richard Dutton, who will also propose a Companion on the same subject as his history, to add to the four Companions to Shakespeare's Works he has co-edited with Jean Howard, is probably the world's leading authority on the history of the Shakespeare's theatre and more broadly, theatre in England through the Tudor to the Jacobean period. What is more his sophistication as a cultural theorist and historicist is widely acknowledged by his peers. He writes lucidly and accessibly. His proposal is also especially timely. It is thirty years since G. E. Bentley poured a lifetime's work on the early modern English stage into The Profession of Dramatist in Shakespeare's Time, 1590-1642 (1971), complemented and rounded out later by The Profession of Player in Shakespeare's Time, 1590-1642 (1984). Between them, these represented the summation of a tradition of scholarship on the working conditions of Shakespeare and his contemporary dramatists -- on the kinds of theatre, audiences, patrons and players for which they wrote. It went back through Bentley's own work on the Jacobean and Caroline theatres, and the parallel labours of such as Glynne Wickham, through E. K. Chambers' magisterial The Elizabethan Stage (1923), and ultimately back to the pioneering efforts of Edmond Malone at the end of the eighteenth century to locate these matters within a coherent and comprehensible historical record.

This was the tradition that also produced, for example, Samuel Schoenbaum's William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life (1975), and was conveniently encapsulated for more general consumption in the first edition of Andrew Gurr's The Shakespearean Stage (1970). It was positivist theatrical history, heavily driven by conservative interpretations of what it chose to accept as factual evidence, chary of social, economic, cultural and political explanations which were not tangibly part of the written record. At the same time, it was often dogged (more or less unconsciously) by a Whiggish view of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a struggle between authoritarian monarchies and elements in the country which resisted arbitrary and repressive government -- a struggle which culminated in the Civil War. The theatre was often cast as an unfortunate pawn in this struggle: a popular/professional art-form adopted by the aristocracy, reviled and resisted by puritans (especially in the City of London), latterly made decadent by over-dependence on the court, and finally swept away by the closure of the theatres in 1642.

Much of the evidence-base unearthed by this tradition of theatre history remains indispensable. But since Bentley our understanding of the early modern era (a terminology itself loaded with cultural freight) has been transformed out of all recognition: by social and political historians (Marxist and revisionist both), and by new historicist, cultural materialist and feminist-historicist literary scholars, as well as by more conventional theatre historians. To mention only some of the most obvious and far-reaching issues:

* the nature of patronage in the period has been re-examined by scholars too numerous to mention, revealing it to be less a matter of aristocratic largesse than part of the essential socio-economic fabric, a system of nuanced reciprocal exchanges which bound society together; these matters are beginning to be explored in relation to dramatic patronage, where the nature of the implied relationship is still little understood -- a major collection of essays on this subject, edited by Paul W. White and Suzanne Westfall, was recently published by Cambridge UP.
* our understanding of theatrical practice in the period is being radically changed by the coming to fruition of the Records of Early English Drama project, as may be seen in such publications as Andrew Gurr's The Shakespearian Playing Companies (1996) and Scott McMillin and Sally-Beth MacLean's The Queen's Men and their Plays (1999): the latter is the first sustained attempt to make the theatrical 'company' (a term also in debate) the centre of attention, rather than playwrights, theatres or dramatic genres; critically, this work has forced us to look earlier than the 1590 watershed favoured by Chambers and Bentley (as the putative starting point of Shakespeare's career) and wider than the heavy London focus which this implied, enabling us to see the earlier drama not just as a clumsy fumbling towards the wonders of the Globe and making us rethink such questions as theatrical touring; these issues will be addressed again in two forthcoming Lancastrian Shakespeare volumes (Manchester UP, ed. Findlay, Wilson & Dutton).
* our knowledge of the economics of Elizabethan theatre (and with it our understanding of the 'objections' to it by various City of London authorities) has been transformed by such pioneering studies as those of Susan Cerasano on Philip Henslowe and Edward Alleyn, and by William Ingram's major works, especially The Business of Playing: The Beginnings of Adult Professional Theater in Elizabethan London (1992); this meshes with much work looking at theatre practices in relation to cognate social practices, such as the organisation of trade guilds (to which many of the actors belonged), money-lending and share-holding.
* the social and sexual composition of early modern theatre audiences -- once supposedly 'settled' by Alfred Harbage -- became the focus of a spirited, and unresolved, debate in the 1980s, involving such figures as Anne Jennalie Cook, Andrew Gurr, Martin Butler and Kathleen McLuskie.
* parallel to this, the practice of boys/young men playing the roles of women on the early modern stage has been ransacked for its implications, both as a business practice and as a matter of gender signification.

Spis treści

List of Illustrations x

List of Boxes xi

Preface xii

Introduction 1

Palamon and Arcite was Performed with the Queen Herself Present on the Stage 1

The Upstart Crow 7

Notes 17

1 The Early Years 19

Stratford and Staging Practices 19

Princely Pleasures at Kenilworth 25

Mystery Cycles and Trade Guilds 27

Competing Authorities 28

Straws in the Wind 29

A System of Protection and Control 33

Roads Not Taken 34

Notes 36

2 Possible Beginnings 38

Shakespeare and the Queen s Men s Theory 39

Tarlton 44

Shakespeare and Alexander Hoghton s Will 50

Strange s Men 60

Notes 71

3 Shakespeare on the Record and the Stages of 1594: Newington Butts, the Theatre, Greenwich Palace, and Gray s Inn 75

Plague 75

Duopoly 77

Shakespeare in the Records 81

Four Playing Places 82

The Theatre 83

Burbage 102

Kemp 103

Motley 105

The Cross Keys Inn 114

Greenwich Palace 117

Gray s Inn 130

Notes 136

4 The Chamberlain s / King s Men and their Organization 140

Sharers 140

Hired Men (and Women) 156

Hired Men as Actors 157

Gatherers 159

Tirewomen 167

Tiremen 169

Musicians 174

Book ]keepers 177

Stage ]keepers 180

Apprentices 182

Conclusions 188

Notes 188

5 A Stormy Passage, from the Theatre, via the Curtain, to the Globe 193

2 The Seven Deadly Sins 205

The Stories 209

Commentary 213

The Text 213

Authorship and Dating of the Play(s) 213

Those Playhouses Shall be Plucked Down 221

Notes 227

6 The Great Globe Itself 230

The Galleries 232

Lords Rooms 234

Stage Directions 242

Playhouse of the Spoken Word 257

Robert Armin 264

The War of the Theatres 271

Notes 274

7 A New Reign 277

A Royal Master 279

Little Eyases and The Malcontent 281

Notes 288

8 The Blackfriars 290

Your Master s Worship House, here, in the Friars 299

The New Repertoire 303

Descent Machinery 305

Jonson and Shakespeare in the New House 309

Notes 319

Appendix: Chamberlain s/King s Men s Plays 1594 1614, Other than by Shakespeare 322

Extant Texts, with Dates of Performance and Publication, and Probable Playhouse of First Performance 322

Anon 323

Non ]Extant or Unidentified Plays Associated with the Company 324

Bibliography 325

Primary Material from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries 325

Secondary Material 329

Index 341

O autorze

Richard Dutton is Professor of English at Queen′s University, Belfast, and Humanities Distinguished Professor of English (Emeritus) at Ohio State University. His books include, Shakespeare, Court Dramatist (2016) and Ben Jonson, ′Volpone′ and the Gunpowder Plot (2008). He is co–editor of the four volume Companion to Shakespeare′s Works (with Jean E. Howard, Wiley Blackwell, 2003).

Blurb

Shakespeare′s Theatre: A History examines the theatre spaces used by William Shakespeare, and situates these locations in relation to the social and political climate of the Elizabethan era. The text journeys from the provincial inns and guild halls of the Bard′s early career, to the purpose–built outdoor playhouses of London, including the Globe, the Theatre, and the Curtain, and the royal courts of Elizabeth and James I. The author also discusses the players for whom Shakespeare wrote, and the positioning or dispositioning of audience members in relation to the stage.

Widely and deeply researched, this fascinating volume draws upon recent archaeological work on the remains of the Rose and the Globe, as well as publications from the Records of Early English Drama project. Chapters relate the practicalities of early modern playing to the evolving systems of aristocratic patronage and royal licensing within which they developed, providing a sociological frame for understanding how physical spaces and commercial constraints shaped the creative practice and performance of Shakespeare′s work.

Insightful and engaging, Shakespeare′s Theatre: A History is ideal reading for undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars of literature and theatre studies.