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Boy Actors in Early Modern England: Skill and Stagecraft in the Theatre provides a new approach to the study of early modern boy actors, offering a historical re-appraisal of these performers' physical skills in order to reassess their wide-reaching contribution to early modern theatrical culture. Ranging across drama performed from the 1580s to the 1630s by all-boy and adult companies alike, the book argues that the exuberant physicality fostered in boy performers across the early modern repertory shaped not only their own performances, but how and why plays were written for them in the first place. Harry R. McCarthy's ground-breaking approach to boy performance draws on detailed analysis of a wide range of plays, thorough interrogation of the cultural contexts in which they were written and performed, and present-day practice-based research, offering a critical reimagining of this important and unique facet of early modern theatrical culture.
List of contents
Introduction; 1. 'All feats of activitie, and motions': Rethinking early modern boyhoods; 2. Staging skill: Movement, metatheatre, and boy actors' theatrical reputations; 3. 'The Bettering of the body': Staging sport in the boy company repertory; 4. 'Sport indeede': Star roles as physical showcase; Conclusion.
About the author
Harry R. McCarthy is a Junior Research Fellow in English at Jesus College, University of Cambridge. He is the author of Performing Early Modern Drama Beyond Shakespeare: Edward's Boys (2020), and has published on early modern and contemporary performance in English Literary History, Early Theatre, Shakespeare, and Shakespeare Survey.
Summary
Harry R. McCarthy's innovative study draws on theatre history and present-day performance to foreground how boys' physical skills shaped the plays in which they performed. Through in-depth readings of a wide range of plays, this book offers a critical reimagining of early modern theatrical culture.
