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This book offers an accessible introduction to England's sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century playing industry and a fresh account of the architecture, multiple uses, communities, crowds, and proprietors of playhouses.
It builds on recent scholarship and new documentary and archaeological discoveries to answer the questions: what did playhouses do, what did they look like, and how did they function? The book will accordingly introduce readers to a rich and exciting spectrum of "play" and playhouses, not only in London but also around England. The detailed but wide-ranging case studies examined here go beyond staged drama to explore early modern sport, gambling, music, drinking, and animal baiting; they recover the crucial influence of female playhouse owners and managers; and they recognise rich provincial performance cultures as well as the burgeoning of London's theatre industry.
This book will have wide appeal with readers across Shakespeare, early modern performance studies, theatre history, and social history.
List of contents
Note on Texts and Spelling
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: The “Playhouse” Canon
Chapter 1: Archetypes
Chapter 2: Multipurpose Spaces
Chapter 3: Crowd Capacities
Chapter 4: Community Hubs
Chapter 5: Businesses
Coda: Archives and Afterlives
Index
About the author
Callan Davies researches the cultural, literary, and theatrical history of early modern England. He has taught at universities across the UK and at Shakespeare's Globe, and he is part of the project teams Before Shakespeare and Middling Culture. His work includes studies of Elizabethan playhouses, rhetoric, practice-as-research and a monograph with Routledge, Strangeness in Jacobean Drama.
Summary
This book offers an accessible introduction to England’s sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century playing industry and a fresh account of the architecture, multiple uses, communities, crowds, and proprietors of playhouses.
