This ground-breaking study is the first history of the professional acting companies who brought drama to London in Shakespeare's time. Gurr draws on the most up-to-date research to provide a general history of company development from the 1560s, when the first of the major companies belonging to great lords began regularly to offer their plays at court and in London, to 1642, when by Act of Parliament they were closed down. He offers detailed and fascinating accounts of each of the forty companies that played in London during the period, including Shakespeare's company, The...

By bringing together evidence from different sources--documentary, archaeological, and the play-texts themselves--Staging Shakespeare's Theatres reconstructs the ways in which the plays were originally staged in the theaters of Shakespeare's own time, and shows how the physical possibilities and limitations of these theaters affected both the writing and the performances. The book explains the conditions under which the early playwrights and players worked, their preparation of the plays for the stage, and their rehearsal practices. It looks at the quality of evidence supplied by the...

The Quarto text of King Henry V is of unique importance. It has the authority of being transcribed by actors in Shakespeare's own company as a record of their first performances of the play at the Globe in 1599. Half as long as the 1623 First Folio version, it represents a practical staging text that streamlined the script supplied by Shakespeare. Andrew Gurr examines each variant from the Folio text in detail, shedding new light on what happened to scripts that the Shakespeare company bought from their resident playwright.

Andrew Gurr's classic account of Shakespeare's historical audience assembles evidence from the writings of the time to describe the physical, social and mental conditions of playgoing. In addition to revising and adding new material which has emerged since the second edition, Gurr develops new sections about points of special interest. Fifty new entries have been added to the list of playgoers and a dozen new quotations about the experience of playgoing. Second Edition Hb (1996): 0-521-58014-5 Second Edition Pb (1996): 0-521-57449-8

The Quarto text of King Henry V is of unique importance. It has the authority of being transcribed by actors in Shakespeare's own company as a record of their first performances of the play at the Globe in 1599. Half as long as the 1623 First Folio version, it represents a practical staging text that streamlined the script supplied by Shakespeare. Andrew Gurr examines each variant from the Folio text in detail, shedding new light on what happened to scripts that the Shakespeare company bought from their resident playwright.

Created in 1594, the theater company in which Shakespeare acted and which staged all his plays became the King's Men in 1603 and ran for forty-eight years up to closure in 1642. Andrew Gurr studies the company's activities, explores its social role and examines its repertoire of plays. This comprehensive illustrated history will be an indispensable guide for anyone wanting to know more about the conditions under which Shakespeare and his successors worked.

A newly revised edition of Andrew Gurr's classic account of playgoing in Shakespeare's time.

Updated edition of Shakespeare's most celebrated war play, Henry V, with a new introductory section.

"Andrew Gurr has written a stimulating introduction to the play itself and its theatrical background." The Times Literary Supplement Written in 1609 for Shakespeare's company, Philaster is one of the most ambitious works of literary collaboration ever attempted. Whereas only the lowest potboiling third of the dramatic repertory of the time was produced by multiple authorship, this hybrid drama by a pair of young dramatists was also a new type of tragicomedy. Its success led the play to be performed for over thirty years and made Beaumont and Fletcher the only authors besides Shakespeare and...

For almost forty years The Shakespearean Stage has been considered the liveliest, most reliable and most entertaining overview of Shakespearean theatre in its own time. It is the only authoritative book that describes all the main features of the original staging of Shakespearean drama in one volume: the acting companies and their practices, the playhouses, the staging and the audiences. Thoroughly revised and updated, this fourth edition contains fresh materials about how specific plays by Shakespeare were first staged, and provides new information about the companies that staged them and...