***Listed in THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION's Weekly Book List, March 28, 2011*** The role of the audience takes on new importance when performance is reconceived as a dialectical activity. The ess
Several famous playwrights of the Elizabethan and Stuart periods, including Shakespeare, wrote for open-air public theatres and also for the private, indoor theatres at the palaces at which the court resided. This book is a full account of such court theatre, and examines the theatrical entertainments for Elizabeth I, James I and Charles I. By contrast with the now vanished playhouses of the time, four of the royal chambers used as theatres survive, and the author attempts to draw as full a picture as he can of such places, the physical and aesthetic conditions under which actors worked in them, and the composition and conduct of court audiences. The book includes plans and illustrations of the theatres and an appendix which lists all known court performances of plays and masques between 1558 and 1652.
Scholars do not contest that English Reformation culture centred on 'the word preached'; that before the advent of newsbooks, sermons were the primary means available for shaping public opinion; or th
This essay collection builds on the latest research on the topic of theatre audiences in early modern England. In broad terms, the project answers the question, 'How do we define the relationships bet
Representations of demonic possession and exorcism rituals abound in English Renaissance drama, an area which this book seeks to illuminate by comparison with non-dramatic works. The author investigat
This edition constitutes a new archive of source materials in the field of Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre. It is a collection of over one hundred wills left by those who participate in the life of t