Tiffany Stern
University of Birmingham, Shakespeare Institute, Faculty Member
- Royal Holloway, University of London, English, Faculty MemberUniversity of Oxford, English, Faculty Memberadd
- English, Book History, Shakespeare, Theatre History, Early Modern English drama, Editing, and 46 moreRestoration and Eighteenth-Century English Drama, History of the Book, Renaissance Studies, Thomas Middleton, Ben Jonson, Shakespearean Adaptation, Restoration Comedy, Shakespeare in Performance, English Renaissance Drama, English Renaissance Literature, Note Taking, History of music, Early Modern print culture, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Trumpet, History of theatre, George Farquhar, William Wycherley, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Theatre Studies, Early Modern England, Early Modern Sermons, Shakespearean performance history, Early Modern theatre studies, Early modern English drama and theatre practice, Early Modern Drama: Text and Performance, Eighteenth-Century Theatre, Early Modern Literature, Lewis Theobald, David Garrick, Edmond Malone, Stanislávski, Theatrical Space, Architecture, Bibliography, Close Reading, Forgery, Fakery, Fraud, Early modern Germany, Theatre Studies, Theatre Theory, playwriting, Playwriting, Audience and Reception Studies, Commonplace Books, Puppetry, History of timekeeping, History of Time, and Samuel Johnsonedit
In 2017 John Markham brought a family heirloom to BBC1’s The Antiques Roadshow: a tiny notebook filled with hand-written Shakespeare quotations. But what was it exactly? I was lucky enough to analyse the book for a follow-up broadcast in... more
In 2017 John Markham brought a family heirloom to BBC1’s The Antiques Roadshow: a tiny notebook filled with hand-written Shakespeare quotations. But what was it exactly? I was lucky enough to analyse the book for a follow-up broadcast in 2019. This is what I found.
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Let's start with that picture. An engraving by Martin Droeshout, it may well be apprentice work (Droeshout was twenty-two when the Folio was printed and was perhaps still learning his trade). But that hardly explains why Shakespeare's... more
Let's start with that picture. An engraving by Martin Droeshout, it may well be apprentice work (Droeshout was twenty-two when the Folio was printed and was perhaps still learning his trade). But that hardly explains why Shakespeare's face is so … damp, light pooling on a sweaty spot on the bald upper temple, a shiny crevice under the left eye, the greasy sheen along the length of the nose, a dot of moisture on the lower lip. Droeshout's engraving will have been based on a portrait, as was usual at the time (he was fifteen when Shakespeare died and is unlikely ever to have seen his subject). Was the portrait behind the picture itself unflattering, perhaps showing Shakespeare when he was ill? Or were the spots of light Droeshout's early, unsuccessful, experiments with visual contrast?
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It’s easy to think that the First Folio must be a well-constructed book because it is so important. Actually though, it is as subject to error and mistakes as any other book of the early modern period, perhaps more so (it is, after all,... more
It’s easy to think that the First Folio must be a well-constructed book because it is so important. Actually though, it is as subject to error and mistakes as any other book of the early modern period, perhaps more so (it is, after all, big); it is filled with blunders, and those fascinating slip-ups give us a glimpse into the habits and working practices of some of the people who put the book together.
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IN 1633 FRANCIS QUARLES published a disdainful epigram about the connection between ‘Players’ and ‘Ballad-Mungers’ – traders of ballads – and their products. ‘Our merry Ballads, and lascivious Playes / Are much alike’, he maintained;... more
IN 1633 FRANCIS QUARLES published a disdainful epigram
about the connection between ‘Players’ and ‘Ballad-Mungers’ –
traders of ballads – and their products. ‘Our merry Ballads, and
lascivious Playes / Are much alike’, he maintained; ‘T’one sings;
the other sayes; / And both are Fripp’ries of anothers Froth’.
According to Quarles, then, not only are plays and ballads
closely connected: each is the flourish on the other.1 Plays and
ballads, implies Quarles, at the least require one another; and
perhaps even, sometimes, bring one another about.
This lecture is about interrelationships between ballads and
plays; frippery and froth. It is in three parts. The first considers
ballads used, and sometimes authored, by two representative
playwrights, Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare.
The second part is on the ballad-jigs and ballad-‘themes’ performed
when plays were over, promoted and maybe authored
by clowns. The third concerns the place where theatre ballads
were sold and by whom: outside playhouses and by ‘outsiders’
from society. And, as the ballads ‘outside’ plays seem to have
consisted of the ‘within’- and ‘after’-play ballads, this lecture
asks where conceptually, physically, and geographically plays
stop and ballads start; to what extent ballads are crucial paratexts
to performed plays and vice versa; and what play-ballads
can contribute to our understanding of authorship, on the one
hand, and genre on the other.
about the connection between ‘Players’ and ‘Ballad-Mungers’ –
traders of ballads – and their products. ‘Our merry Ballads, and
lascivious Playes / Are much alike’, he maintained; ‘T’one sings;
the other sayes; / And both are Fripp’ries of anothers Froth’.
According to Quarles, then, not only are plays and ballads
closely connected: each is the flourish on the other.1 Plays and
ballads, implies Quarles, at the least require one another; and
perhaps even, sometimes, bring one another about.
This lecture is about interrelationships between ballads and
plays; frippery and froth. It is in three parts. The first considers
ballads used, and sometimes authored, by two representative
playwrights, Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare.
The second part is on the ballad-jigs and ballad-‘themes’ performed
when plays were over, promoted and maybe authored
by clowns. The third concerns the place where theatre ballads
were sold and by whom: outside playhouses and by ‘outsiders’
from society. And, as the ballads ‘outside’ plays seem to have
consisted of the ‘within’- and ‘after’-play ballads, this lecture
asks where conceptually, physically, and geographically plays
stop and ballads start; to what extent ballads are crucial paratexts
to performed plays and vice versa; and what play-ballads
can contribute to our understanding of authorship, on the one
hand, and genre on the other.
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It is a truism that plays were written for the space in which they were to be performed: and that therefore to understand Shakespeare, one should understand his playhouses. But though much important work has been done on the physical... more
It is a truism that plays were written for the space in which they were to be performed: and that therefore to understand Shakespeare, one should understand his playhouses. But though much important work has been done on the physical aspects of Shakespeare's playing spaces-how big they were, how many people they held, how their sightlines and acoustics worked-much less has been written about the way they were interpreted. This article sets out to explain how discrete bits of Shakespeare's indoor and outdoor theatres were understood metaphorically. It
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This article is on connections between William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and Tang Xianzu (1550-1616): two great playwrights who inscribed their literature in ignorance of one another, but whose work has startling similarities. Much has been... more
This article is on connections between William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and Tang Xianzu (1550-1616): two great playwrights who inscribed their literature in ignorance of one another, but whose work has startling similarities. Much has been written on their shared subjects – their focus on love but also dreams, their fascination with the way a supernatural world influences our human one. Much has been written, too, on how they based their tales on stories they had read, but then enriched and complicated them. Less has been written, however, on the musical connection between the two writers. That is because it is often thought that, while Tang Zianzu was writing for singers, Shakespeare was writing for speakers. This article will argue, however, that Shakespeare’s own verse was far more shaped to music than is usually thought, and that consequently he and Tang Xianzu have a further, haunting, connection: music.
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‘Theatre’ and ‘playhouse’ are two words often used interchangeably nowadays. In the early modern period, however, each word was known to be different in meaning, intent, and reach. While ‘theatre’ signified a classical space with a visual... more
‘Theatre’ and ‘playhouse’ are two words often used interchangeably nowadays. In the early modern period, however, each word was known to be different in meaning, intent, and reach. While ‘theatre’ signified a classical space with a visual focus (it had its origins in the Greek verb θεᾶσθαι, ‘to see’), ‘playhouse’ signified a locus of all-purpose entertainment (it can be roughly translated ‘storeplace of fun’). This chapter consequently has two parts: ‘theatre’ and ‘playhouse’. It first considers the elevated, classical, and highly visual credentials of ‘theatre’, asking how that word is used in early modern drama and why the spectators might also be known, collectively, as a ‘theatre’. It then investigates ‘house’+‘play’, exploring how many internal ‘houses’ – tiring house, domestic house, music house, tap house, and house of office – made up the single playhouse space; and asking why the audience there was – and still is – known as ‘the house’. It turns finally to the way ‘play’ stands for a variety of onstage ‘fun’ – swordfights, puppet shows, acrobatic displays, wit-battles – as well as offstage sales of food, drink, books, and ballads, in addition to text. Given that neither ‘theatre’ nor ‘playhouse’ are words that focus on staged ‘drama’, its question, throughout, is what they reveal about the priorities of early modern performance spaces.
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This chapter is on the legend of King Bladud, ‘maker’ of the baths of Bath. It is in two parts. Part one tells the tale of Bladud, as first related by Monmouth in the eleventh century, up until now, showing the changes and permutations it... more
This chapter is on the legend of King Bladud, ‘maker’ of the baths of Bath. It is in two parts. Part one tells the tale of Bladud, as first related by Monmouth in the eleventh century, up until now, showing the changes and permutations it underwent over time. Part two tells the story of Bath over the same period, revealing how Bladud’s founding myth was reconceived whenever beliefs about the hot water changed. Both parts consider what an unfixed foundation mythology reveals about its spa city. To what extent has Bladud's story shaped Bath and its baths, and to what extent has Bath and its baths shaped what is, in more than one sense, the fluid tale of Bladud?
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This article is on performing tragedy. It looks at three aspects of tragic stage production: tragic curtains; tragic walks; and speaking in a tragic tone. In exploring how tragedy could be conveyed materially and physically, beyond,... more
This article is on performing tragedy. It looks at three aspects of tragic stage production: tragic curtains; tragic walks; and speaking in a tragic tone. In exploring how tragedy could be conveyed materially and physically, beyond, beside or without words, it shows how crucial staging was to a play’s categorisation and hence meaning.
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This edited collection finds ways in which the two fields, theatre and book history, can learn from and give to one another and, on occasion, solder their separations. It is the result of a Folger Shakespeare Library Symposium that... more
This edited collection finds ways in which the two fields, theatre and book history, can learn from and give to one another and, on occasion, solder their separations. It is the result of a Folger Shakespeare Library Symposium that brought theorists, book historians and theatre historians together in what turned out to be a feverish and passionate dialogue. Over a week of collaboration and sharing, ‘documents’ and their attendant ‘playbooks’ were found to be more entangled, and often in odder ways, than either theatre or book history separately had suggested.
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This chapter is on the strange and complicated connections between ballads and the plays of Shakespeare. It considers, on the one hand, Shakespeare’s explicit use of ballads both in performance and as printed texts in his plays; on the... more
This chapter is on the strange and complicated connections between ballads and the plays of Shakespeare. It considers, on the one hand, Shakespeare’s explicit use of ballads both in performance and as printed texts in his plays; on the other the ‘play ballads’ for which he may or may not have been responsible, that tell the stories of bits of, and sometimes the entirety of, his plays. Asking whether Shakespeare promoted links between ballads and plays, or simply used them when they were there, it raises questions about the form and nature of theatrical marketing. How and why did plays batten on ballads? Did Shakespeare, or his theatre, ever market ballads to market plays?
Research Interests: Theatre History, Shakespeare, Early Modern Drama: Text and Performance, Renaissance music, Shakespearean Drama, and 8 moreEarly Modern London theatre, Ballads, English Broadside Ballads, Early Modern Popular Culture, Shakespeare in Performance, William Shakespeare, Shakespeare and Music, and Early Modern English Music
T his article is on “non-paper” literature, taking as its focus a set of po- ems written on banqueting trenchers. Its intention is to literalise con- siderations of “the material text” by exploring poems on “things”: “things,” moreover,... more
T his article is on “non-paper” literature, taking as its focus a set of po- ems written on banqueting trenchers. Its intention is to literalise con- siderations of “the material text” by exploring poems on “things”: “things,” moreover, that are place- and occasion-specific, and that therefore have a quite different relationship to their readers and owners from that of books. A second, linked, aim is to examine why such literature is barely studied, and how we might think of printed text differently if we con- sidered “non-paper” writing more. Investigating the way books are cat- alogued as codexes, indexed by content and placed in libraries, while “things” are catalogued as objects, indexed by type, and placed in muse- ums, it asks how much writing is unknown, effectively “lost,” because of where it is housed.
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This chapter tells the history of what have come to be called ‘stage directions’: short, practical performance or reader-oriented instructions, often in pigeon Latin, of unclear authorship, that typically start, end and intersperse a... more
This chapter tells the history of what have come to be called ‘stage directions’: short, practical performance or reader-oriented instructions, often in pigeon Latin, of unclear authorship, that typically start, end and intersperse a printed play. It is in three parts, beginning in the eighteenth century when the phrase ‘stage direction’ was co-invented by Alexander Pope and Lewis Theobald as a term for non-authorial directives in Shakespeare. It then turns to medieval and early modern plays, asking what a ‘stage direction’ was before it had a title, where it was situated on the page, what language it employed, who may have written it and for whom, and whether indeed it was ‘it’ before two words defined it as one entity. Finally, the essay considers the ‘stage direction’ after the term became established, asking how the rise of the theatre’s ‘stage director’ affected what ‘stage directions’ were on page and stage. Throughout, then, the chapter tells two different and only partially-connected stories: one is the story of the term ‘stage direction’, and the other the story of the thing(s) ‘stage direction’.
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This essay will consider the appearance of Staunton’s Blackfriars; the method its actors use in their Renaissance Season; and the way the audience, as a consequence of both, experiences performances. Throughout, it will quote... more
This essay will consider the appearance of Staunton’s Blackfriars; the method its actors use in their Renaissance Season; and the way the audience, as a consequence of both, experiences performances. Throughout, it will quote Shakespearean and other early modern texts in order to show how Shakespeare’s Blackfriars and Staunton’s reflect one another.
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Performance Studies, Shakespeare, Theatrical Space, and 7 moreEarly Modern Drama: Text and Performance, Early Modern English drama, Historically Informed Performance (HIP), Drama, Performance, History of Theatre, Blackfriars Playhouse, Original Practices, and american shakespeare center
This introduction focuses on the four aspects of the play encoded within the title’s single word ‘nothing’– the trivial, the sexual, the observational and the theatrical.
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A reflection on reversal and Shakespeare's Twelfth Night
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On Richard III, and Shakespeare's obsession with mirrors.
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Court and Comedy; Sex and Subjection; Illness and Cure; Theatre and Reality; The Country Wife Today
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This forward explores the relationship between tune and words in the early modern period, and discusses the way plays were framed by ballads.
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IN the 1580s and 90s a man was writing who never called any of his works satires: Thomas Nashe (1567–c.1601). Yet ‘satire’ was to be a term conferred upon his works by admirers who sought to define—and so limit—the nature of the prose he... more
IN the 1580s and 90s a man was writing who never called any of his works satires: Thomas Nashe (1567–c.1601). Yet ‘satire’ was to be a term conferred upon his works by admirers who sought to define—and so limit—the nature of the prose he wrote.
Samuel Sheppard wrote of Nashe’s ‘sweet Satyrick veine’, and John Taylor swore by the urn of ‘sweete Satyricke Nash’. Thomas Dekker memorialized ‘ingenious, ingenuous, fluent, facetious, T. Nash: from whose aboundant pen, hony flow’d to [his] friends, and mortall Aconite to [his] enemies’, and saw Nashe as both ‘Luculent Poet’ and ‘Sharpest Satyre’. But what, to Nashe’s friends and enemies, did ‘satire’ denote, particularly in combination with honey or sweetness? And why did Nashe himself avoid the word? This chapter explores the extent to which Nashe was and was not a writer of satires, as well as where his ‘sweetness’ resides, examining, first, what early modern writers took ‘satire’ to mean, and then to examine who was thought to be writing it.
Samuel Sheppard wrote of Nashe’s ‘sweet Satyrick veine’, and John Taylor swore by the urn of ‘sweete Satyricke Nash’. Thomas Dekker memorialized ‘ingenious, ingenuous, fluent, facetious, T. Nash: from whose aboundant pen, hony flow’d to [his] friends, and mortall Aconite to [his] enemies’, and saw Nashe as both ‘Luculent Poet’ and ‘Sharpest Satyre’. But what, to Nashe’s friends and enemies, did ‘satire’ denote, particularly in combination with honey or sweetness? And why did Nashe himself avoid the word? This chapter explores the extent to which Nashe was and was not a writer of satires, as well as where his ‘sweetness’ resides, examining, first, what early modern writers took ‘satire’ to mean, and then to examine who was thought to be writing it.
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When the SAA came up with its system of seminars, two subjects were thought so fundamental to the study of Shakespeare that they were guaranteed a yearly slot: bibliography and the study of historical performance, ‘theatre history’. Yet... more
When the SAA came up with its system of seminars, two subjects were thought so fundamental to the study of Shakespeare that they were guaranteed a yearly slot: bibliography and the study of historical performance, ‘theatre history’. Yet over time the bibliography seminar lost its privileged position, though seminars on that crucial theme are proposed and run most years. The theatre history seminar, however, has remained a fixture ever since. What makes the history of performance of permanent interest in the changing field of Shakespeare studies?
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It was in 1726 that Lewis Theobald coined ‘stage direction’ for a prompter’s note on a play. He popularized the term, however, in his Works of Shakespeare published in 1733. There he used ‘stage directions’ to describe the ‘blundering’... more
It was in 1726 that Lewis Theobald coined ‘stage direction’ for a prompter’s note on a play. He popularized the term, however, in his Works of Shakespeare published in 1733. There he used ‘stage directions’ to describe the ‘blundering’ content of the dumb show in Hamlet, and a similar ‘shew’ in Macbeth, both written, he believed, by Heminges and Condell. In the phrase’s rst editorial outing, then, a ‘stage direction’ was a term of abuse; it described instructions for dumb action that were too bad to be authorial.
This chapter is in three parts. In the rst, it will investigate the oddity of dumb shows and similar sequences – their redundant titles, their easy loss and misplacement in playbooks, their unusual typography, their non-authorial content – to show why Theobald condemned them with the insult ‘stage direction’. In the second, it will examine the way Theobald’s noun phrase was adopted and adapted over time, creating ‘stage directions’ as we now understand them. In the third, it will explore how applying the modern concept of ‘stage direction’ to Shakespearean plays has misled scholars. Considering early modern ‘scribe directions’, ‘stage keeper directions’, ‘prompter directions’ and ‘action directions’, it will ask whether any Shakespearean paratexts are ‘stage directions’, either by our de nition, or by Theobald’s.
This chapter is in three parts. In the rst, it will investigate the oddity of dumb shows and similar sequences – their redundant titles, their easy loss and misplacement in playbooks, their unusual typography, their non-authorial content – to show why Theobald condemned them with the insult ‘stage direction’. In the second, it will examine the way Theobald’s noun phrase was adopted and adapted over time, creating ‘stage directions’ as we now understand them. In the third, it will explore how applying the modern concept of ‘stage direction’ to Shakespearean plays has misled scholars. Considering early modern ‘scribe directions’, ‘stage keeper directions’, ‘prompter directions’ and ‘action directions’, it will ask whether any Shakespearean paratexts are ‘stage directions’, either by our de nition, or by Theobald’s.
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This brief essay looks at the tantalising and suggestive information about early modern play manuscripts that is to be found in SRs. Showing how the SRs are ordered and presented and what kinds of research questions they provoke, it asks... more
This brief essay looks at the tantalising and suggestive information about early modern play manuscripts that is to be found in SRs. Showing how the SRs are ordered and presented and what kinds of research questions they provoke, it asks as much as it answers.
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Despite the fact that theatres of Shakespeare’s age did not make use of scenery, and so could offer little embellishment of fictional location, they could be arranged, visually, to make statements about genre. References bear witness to... more
Despite the fact that theatres of Shakespeare’s age did not make use of scenery, and so could offer little embellishment of fictional location, they could be arranged, visually, to make statements about genre. References bear witness to the way playhouses might be adorned with hangings that emphasized tragic stories: ‘The Stage all hang’d with the sad death of Kings, | From whose bewailing story sorrow springs.’ More often, though, they made outright statements of tragic genre through colour—‘A spatious Theatre first mee thought I saw, | All hang’d with black to act some tragedie’; ‘when the stage of the world was hung in blacke, they jetted uppe & downe like proud Tragedians’; ‘The stage is hung with blacke: and I perceive | The Auditors preparde for Tragedie’.Sometimes, then, from the moment an audience entered a playhouse, and before the play actually began, ‘tragedy’, had already started. In such instances ‘tragedy’ did not need to be part of a title, or a direction in which a play tended—it could, rather, be a look, an atmosphere, a theatrical mood. ‘Tragedy’, was a kind of performance as well as a kind of drama, as this chapter explores; the formality and insistent bleakness of the theatrical space was, on occasion, part of the interpretative meaning of what was put on there.
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This chapter asks whether paratextual performative elements not usually materially appended to edited playbooks (what Gerard Genette (1997: 344) calls ‘epitexts’) are important to play, text, edition and/or meaning. It investigates the... more
This chapter asks whether paratextual performative elements not usually materially appended to edited playbooks (what Gerard Genette (1997: 344) calls ‘epitexts’) are important to play, text, edition and/or meaning. It investigates the blasts of a trumpet that heralded a play’s ‘beginning’, and the prayer, music, clowning and announcement that followed a play’s
‘end’, questioning when a play actually started and stopped. By so doing, it complicates questions about how plays should be edited, while also asking what, ultimately, a ‘play’ is.
‘end’, questioning when a play actually started and stopped. By so doing, it complicates questions about how plays should be edited, while also asking what, ultimately, a ‘play’ is.
Research Interests: Music History, Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Performance Studies, Book History, and 9 moreShakespeare, Scholarly Editing, Early Modern Drama: Text and Performance, Early Modern theatre studies, Trumpet, Shakespeare in Performance, Paratexts, Textual Criticism and Editing, and Early Modern Staging Practices
Like a number of other prologues of the early modern period, the prologue to Romeo and Juliet is clear about the length of time its play will take in performance. Two hours. But how literal is that claim? A tendency to take the prologue... more
Like a number of other prologues of the early modern period, the prologue to Romeo and Juliet is clear about the length of time its play will take in performance. Two hours. But how literal is that claim? A tendency to take the prologue at face value has resulted in the assumption that Shakespeare’s plays, most of which take longer than two hours to perform, have not survived in their stage form. Instead, goes the argument, we have them in a totally different version: as they were rewritten, at length, for the page.
This article will question whether plays ever habitually took two hours to perform. It will look at the lengths of playtexts and will ask when and why the ‘two hour’ claim was made. But it will also investigate a bigger question. What did ‘two hours’ mean in the early modern period? Exploring, in succession, hourglasses, sundials and mechanical clocks, it will consider which chronological gauges were visible or audible in the early modern playhouse, and what hours, minutes and seconds might have meant to an early modern playwright who lacked trustworthy access to any of them. What, it will ask, was time, literally and figuratively, for Shakespeare—and how did chronographia, the rhetorical art of describing time, shape his writing?
This article will question whether plays ever habitually took two hours to perform. It will look at the lengths of playtexts and will ask when and why the ‘two hour’ claim was made. But it will also investigate a bigger question. What did ‘two hours’ mean in the early modern period? Exploring, in succession, hourglasses, sundials and mechanical clocks, it will consider which chronological gauges were visible or audible in the early modern playhouse, and what hours, minutes and seconds might have meant to an early modern playwright who lacked trustworthy access to any of them. What, it will ask, was time, literally and figuratively, for Shakespeare—and how did chronographia, the rhetorical art of describing time, shape his writing?
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Shakespeare, Literary Criticism, Shakespearean performance history, and 15 moreShakespearean Drama, Early Modern London theatre, Early Modern theatre studies, Early Modern English drama, Time Perception, Theatre, History of Time, Shakespeare in Performance, History of timekeeping, Clocks, Drama and theatre studies, Sundials, Hourglass, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, and Sand Glass (Hourglass)
Class, Clothes, and Social Climbing; Divas and Divorce; Eighteenth-Century Theatre
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The Country Wife is a hilariously bawdy and subversive drama that pokes fun at the jealous and humourless. Condemning hypocrisy, praising dissolution, and elevating innuendo into an art form, the play is titillating, disquieting and... more
The Country Wife is a hilariously bawdy and subversive drama that pokes fun at the jealous and humourless. Condemning hypocrisy, praising dissolution, and elevating innuendo into an art form, the play is titillating, disquieting and witty; it has provoked powerfully mixed reactions over the years. The seventeenth century libertine king Charles II loved it enough to see it three times, and is said to have joined the ‘dance of cuckolds’ at the end of one performance; the eighteenth-century actor-playwright David Garrick dubbed it ‘the most licentious play in the English language’; the Victorian critic Thomas Babington Macaulay compared it to a skunk, because it was ‘too filthy to handle and too noisome even to approach’. These days it is heralded as a Restoration masterpiece. Sexually frank, this play tells a number of vigorous lust stories and perhaps a love story too. Its virtuosity, linguistic energy, brilliant wit and naughtiness make it a staple of the contemporary stage.
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Literature, Restoration Comedies, Seventeenth Century English Literature, and 8 moreRestoration Comedy, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Drama, William Wycherley, Drama and theatre studies, Restoration drama, Seventeenth Century Theatre, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Drama, and Wycherley's The Country Wife
In 1781, a text (dated 1710) of a play entitled 'Der Bestrafte Brudermord' (Fratricide Revenged) was published in Gotha in Germany. It tells an exaggerated, action-filled version the story of Shakespeare’s Hamlet that is often hilarious.... more
In 1781, a text (dated 1710) of a play entitled 'Der Bestrafte Brudermord' (Fratricide Revenged) was published in Gotha in Germany. It tells an exaggerated, action-filled version the story of Shakespeare’s Hamlet that is often hilarious. The Ghost of Hamlet’s father sneaks behind the sentries to box their ears; ‘Ofelia’, sex-crazed with madness, hurls herself at the clown Phantasmo; Hamlet rids himself of two murderers by asking them to shoot him at the same time – he ducks and they shoot one another instead. What is this slapstick, bawdy romp of a Shakespeare tragedy? And how did it come about?
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Performance Studies, Shakespeare, Puppetry, and 11 moreShakespearean performance history, Eighteenth-Century Drama, Shakespearean Drama, German Theatre, Puppet Theatre, Historically Informed Performance (HIP), Shakespeare in Performance, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Drama, Drama and theatre studies, The Travelling Players, and Historically Informed Staging
Unlike the purpose-built Globe playhouse, constructed for Shakespeare's company in around 1600 and rebuilt afresh after a major fire in 1613 – so remaining continually ‘new’ – the Second Blackfriars Playhouse had had several previous... more
Unlike the purpose-built Globe playhouse, constructed for Shakespeare's company in around 1600 and rebuilt afresh after a major fire in 1613 – so remaining continually ‘new’ – the Second Blackfriars Playhouse had had several previous manifestations. By the time Shakespeare's company were given rights to perform in it, in 1608, it had been not just Upper Frater (refectory) to a Dominican Friary, but also Parliament, and a theatre for choristers (1600-1608). This chapter explores the extent to which the prehistory visible in its entrance, stairway and outer shell was part of its very nature. Turning to the contemporary accoutrements of the playhouse (boxes – latticed and otherwise – galleries and stage-stools) and the visual features brought to Blackfriars by audiences (cloaks and bejewelled gowns), it investigates the way nostalgia for court, too, made up the experience of attending the Second Blackfriars Playhouse. Throughout, it asks how Shakespeare's writing was moulded by and to this ghostly space.
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Performance Studies, Shakespeare, Shakespearean performance history, and 16 moreTheatrical Space, Metatheatre, Early Modern Drama: Text and Performance, London theatres and playhouses, Shakespearean Drama, Early Modern London theatre, Early Modern theatre studies, Early Modern English drama, Metadrama, Metatheatre and theatricality, Shakespeare in Performance, London theatres, Drama, Performance, History of Theatre, Archeology and history of the Elizabethan Playhouse and entertainment, Drama and theatre studies, and Theatrical Text
Players and playwrights of the early modern period were famously poverty-stricken. But despite being both, Shakespeare was also comfortably off financially. This article explores what it meant for Shakespeare to be a sharer, and later a... more
Players and playwrights of the early modern period were famously poverty-stricken. But despite being both, Shakespeare was also comfortably off financially. This article explores what it meant for Shakespeare to be a sharer, and later a householder, for his company. It considers the way Shakespeare’s theatres were, because of the sharing system, focussed on making money as much as producing successful plays. With sections on the costs expended by audiences for travel to the theatre and for goods purchased there including food, drink, books, tobacco, and personal adornments, it asks how important ‘non play’ events were financially to the early modern theatre. How, it wonders, did Shakespeare, a shareholder and housekeeper, but also a writer and actor, feel about the incessant playhouse trading on which his financial success partly depended?
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Performance Studies, Shakespeare, Audience and Reception Studies, and 9 moreShakespearean performance history, London theatres and playhouses, Playwriting, Early Modern London theatre, Early Modern Drama, Drama and theatre studies, Theatre Studies, Theatre Theory, playwriting, Snacking Behaviour, and Early Modern English Literature and Drama
A number of puppeteers bear witness to an extraordinary text in Germany: an ancient, farcical version of Hamlet, for puppets, published in 1781. As it turns out, they are referring to a text well known to Hamlet scholars, Der Bestrafte... more
A number of puppeteers bear witness to an extraordinary text in Germany: an ancient, farcical version of Hamlet, for puppets, published in 1781. As it turns out, they are referring to a text well known to Hamlet scholars, Der Bestrafte Brudermord. This article explores Der Bestrafte Brudermord, not so much as a descendent of Q1 (with bits of Q2 muddled in), but as a potential puppet text. It looks at the background to Der Bestrafte Brudermord, explores how drama in adult and puppet form travelled over Europe, and asks whether Der Bestrafte Brudermord might ever have been the product of what Hamlet dismissively calls ‘puppets dallying’.
Research Interests: German Literature, Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Performance Studies, Shakespeare, and 13 morePuppetry, Shakespearean performance history, Shakespearean Drama, German Theatre, Drama and Theater, Puppet Theatre, Hamlet, Shakespeare in Performance, Shakespeare adaptation, Eighteenth-Century Theatre, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Drama, Drama and theatre studies, and Shakespeare In Translation
Shakespeare’s complexity, and his profoundest ‘metatheatre’, this chapter suggests, is angled to the ways in which the physical reality of the stage met the fictions enacted upon it. Exploring the meaning of stage space as location and... more
Shakespeare’s complexity, and his profoundest ‘metatheatre’, this chapter suggests, is angled to the ways in which the physical reality of the stage met the fictions enacted upon it. Exploring the meaning of stage space as location and prop, this chapter argues that Shakespeare used his theatre’s construction itself as a prime locus of imaginative power. As few structural features beyond that of the stage itself have been written about, the argument looks at what surrounded the stage from below (the ‘hell’ with its ‘trap’), from above (the ‘heaven[s]’), on the stage level itself (‘earth’ and its ‘pillars’), and from behind (the ‘scene’ with its ‘balcony’ and ‘ladders’; and the ‘tiring-house’ with its stage ‘bell’). In doing so, it investigates the various statements, metaphors and analogies the stage made for and about itself, and their interpretative ramifications for Shakespeare.
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Performance Studies, Shakespeare, Shakespearean performance history, and 15 moreTheatrical Space, Metatheatre, Early Modern Drama: Text and Performance, Shakespearean Drama, Early Modern London theatre, Metadrama, Metatheatre and theatricality, Shakespeare in Performance, Globe theatre, Metatheatricality, Drama, Performance, History of Theatre, Early Modern Staging Practices, Drama and theatre studies, Metatheater, and Theatre and Space
This chapter looks at the role of music in Twelfth Night, exploring the dose of melancholy it often adds to the play’s festivity. It investigates the three different forms in which music is employed in the play: as song, which combines... more
This chapter looks at the role of music in Twelfth Night,
exploring the dose of melancholy it often adds to the play’s
festivity. It investigates the three different forms in which
music is employed in the play: as song, which combines melody
and poetry – a tension that has its own additional resonance; as
wordless instrumental performance, where music contributes to the play’s sound; and as verbal description, where music is part of the play’s text. Considering traces of an earlier version of Twelfth Night, perhaps closer to the play’s probable Twelfth Night performance, it asks what Twelfth Night gained and lost as it moved away from its point of origin.
exploring the dose of melancholy it often adds to the play’s
festivity. It investigates the three different forms in which
music is employed in the play: as song, which combines melody
and poetry – a tension that has its own additional resonance; as
wordless instrumental performance, where music contributes to the play’s sound; and as verbal description, where music is part of the play’s text. Considering traces of an earlier version of Twelfth Night, perhaps closer to the play’s probable Twelfth Night performance, it asks what Twelfth Night gained and lost as it moved away from its point of origin.
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Performance Studies, Shakespeare, Performance Studies (Music), and 12 moreShakespearean performance history, Renaissance music, Shakespearean Drama, Playwriting, Early Modern English drama, Clown, Shakespeare in Performance, Twelfth Night, Shakespeare and Music, Performance Studies and Musical Theatre, Drama and theatre studies, and Theatre Studies, Theatre Theory, playwriting
This article investigates not whether one person, using one form of shorthand, on one occasion, copied Q1 Hamlet, but whether some people, using any form of handwriting they liked, on any number of occasions, could have penned Hamlet Q1.... more
This article investigates not whether one person, using one form
of shorthand, on one occasion, copied Q1 Hamlet, but whether some people, using any form of handwriting they liked, on any number of occasions, could have penned Hamlet Q1. It considers evidence that plays, like sermons, were noted during
performance; it looks at what might constitute ‘note traces’ in the text of Hamlet and asks why watchers might want to capture in notes – and then publish – the uttered performances that they heard.
of shorthand, on one occasion, copied Q1 Hamlet, but whether some people, using any form of handwriting they liked, on any number of occasions, could have penned Hamlet Q1. It considers evidence that plays, like sermons, were noted during
performance; it looks at what might constitute ‘note traces’ in the text of Hamlet and asks why watchers might want to capture in notes – and then publish – the uttered performances that they heard.
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Book History, History of the Book, Shakespeare, and 18 moreTextual Scholarship, Scholarly Editing, Shakespearean performance history, Shakespearean Drama, Playwriting, Early Modern Sermons, Commonplace Books, Hamlet, Shakespeare in Performance, Textual Criticism and Editing, Shakespeare adaptation, Shorthand, stenography, and other speed-writing or coding systems, Shakespere's Hamlet, Miscellanies and commonplace books, Drama and theatre studies, Theatre Studies, Theatre Theory, playwriting, Texual Criticism, and Note Taking
Research Interests:
This chapter is about the homage routinely paid to Shakespeare by dramatists and performers, and their ignorance of his actual works. It shows that Shakespeare’s plays were known best in their adapted Restoration forms; they were then... more
This chapter is about the homage routinely paid to Shakespeare by dramatists and performers, and their ignorance of his actual works. It shows that Shakespeare’s plays were known best in their adapted Restoration forms; they were then further altered; and it was already-altered seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Shakespeare plays that provided characters, plot moments, and ‘beauties’ to be threaded through subsequent adaptations and, occasionally, imitations. Much of Shakespeare’s popularity, indeed, rested on the extent to which he had already been altered and was thus available for further alteration – his texts were seen as fundamentally unfixed and so free for remoulding and reshaping. Shakespeare was, then, assimilated through the process of adapting his adaptations: his staged works were always current, and that was because they were always substantially eighteenth-century. Though Shakespeare’s characterisation and storylines were regularly extracted for ‘popular’ theatre and puppet entertainments, his plays as a whole were relegated; only particular word-conscious ‘literary’ productions staged Shakespeare's plays in full at all. Even then, however, the playwright’s language and sentiments were updated to fit eighteenth-century mores and his stories were reduced to leave room for exciting new eighteenth-century entertainments. As all Shakespeare was adapted Shakespeare, a habit built up of staging a fictional version of Shakespeare the man to sanction the alterations of his plays. From this it was only a small step before the ‘Shakespeare’ character started to thrive in his own right on the eighteenth-century stage: extending beyond plays actually by the bard, ‘Shakespeare’ began authorizing other plays by other people. Thus both Shakespeare’s works, and ‘Shakespeare’ represent the way the eighteenth-century was able to tame and regularise its past and shape it to the present; what affected eighteenth-century dramatists was not actual Shakespeare but the works and person that they were able to make him be.
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Performance Studies, Shakespeare, Shakespearean performance history, and 13 moreEighteenth-Century Drama, Shakespearean Drama, Shakespeare in Performance, Shakespeare adaptation, Eighteenth-century theatre and performance, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Drama, Historical performance, Shakespearean Adaptation, Drama and theatre studies, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre, Restoration drama, Seventeenth Century Theatre, and David Garrick
The same story – of the murder of a king by poison – is presented three times in Hamlet: as the Ghost’s single-person blank verse narrative in 1.5.59-79; as the players’ dumb show between 3.2.137 and 3.2.138; and as the players’ rhymed... more
The same story – of the murder of a king by poison – is presented three times in Hamlet: as the Ghost’s single-person blank verse narrative in 1.5.59-79; as the players’ dumb show between 3.2.137 and 3.2.138; and as the players’ rhymed playlet in 3.2.157-262. Of these, the dumb show is seemingly the most unnecessary, as it presents in pantomime what will immediately be narrated in dialogue as The Murder of Gonzago, and enacts a wordless version of the tale already told by the Ghost in Act 1. The first half of this essay analyses, in performance terms, what the dumb show contributes to Hamlet, and why it is there; the second half looks at the words of the dumb show as found in two printed texts of Hamlet, Quarto 2 (Q2, 1604), and Folio (F, 1623) (the earliest Hamlet text, Quarto 1 [1603], seems to recall performance rather than dictate it, so its stage-directions are unlikely to be authorial). Since the text for the dumb show has been altered and, this essay will argue, authorially revised between Q2 and F, consideration will be given what the dumb show adds, textually, to a reading of Hamlet.
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Performance Studies, Shakespeare, Shakespearean performance history, and 11 moreEarly Modern Drama: Text and Performance, Shakespearean Drama, Early Modern English drama, Hamlet, Shakespeare in Performance, Paratexts, Shakespeare and the book, Drama and theatre studies, Stage Directions, Importance of Stage Directions, and Dumb Shows
Acting 'spontaneity' – often located in the character – is favored by scholars and directors of ‘original’ performances. But is this notion in fact Stanislavskian in its origin or could it have an earlier heritage? Might ‘sponteaneous’... more
Acting 'spontaneity' – often located in the character – is favored by scholars and directors of ‘original’ performances. But is this notion in fact Stanislavskian in its origin or could it have an earlier heritage? Might ‘sponteaneous’ emotions in performance in fact date to the early modern period?
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Performance Studies, Shakespeare, Shakespearean performance history, and 17 moreRehearsal studies, Shakespearean Drama, Playwriting, Acting, Spontaneity, Historically Informed Performance (HIP), Shakespeare in Performance, Spontaneous speech, Acting Shakespeare, Stanislavskian acting techniques, Voice, Stanislavski System, Rehearsal, Drama and theatre studies, Theatre Studies, Theatre Theory, playwriting, Royal Shakespeare Company, Acting Process, Stanislávski, and Historically Informed Staging
Music of all kinds in any play demands collaboration. It requires that a composer, or at least a tune, be supplied from elsewhere to complete the moment; further collaborations then sometimes become necessary, with a dance master, a... more
Music of all kinds in any play demands collaboration. It requires that a composer, or at least a tune, be supplied
from elsewhere to complete the moment; further collaborations then sometimes become necessary, with a dance
master, a singing teacher, or a set of professional musicians. By looking at who creates the words for music in
Middleton's plays, and how these then circulate, larger questions emerge: How possessive was Middleton about the
music and song passages of the plays he wrote – and, by extension, about other passages? Were ‘ditties’ (the
words to songs) seen as being permanent parts of Middleton's text – and, if not, what does that suggest about his
plays as literature? To what extent was Middleton reliant for his emotional affect on music; and what can surviving
words reveal of the theatrical concerns of the moment? This article examines specific songs in four plays
stretching along the length of Middleton's writing, performing, and publishing career: A Mad World, My Masters
(performed 1605 by Paul's Boys, printed 1608); A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (performed 1613 by Lady Elizabeth's
Men, printed 1630); The Witch (performed 1615–16 by King's Men, printed 1778); and The Widow (performed
1615–17 by King's Men, and printed 1652).
from elsewhere to complete the moment; further collaborations then sometimes become necessary, with a dance
master, a singing teacher, or a set of professional musicians. By looking at who creates the words for music in
Middleton's plays, and how these then circulate, larger questions emerge: How possessive was Middleton about the
music and song passages of the plays he wrote – and, by extension, about other passages? Were ‘ditties’ (the
words to songs) seen as being permanent parts of Middleton's text – and, if not, what does that suggest about his
plays as literature? To what extent was Middleton reliant for his emotional affect on music; and what can surviving
words reveal of the theatrical concerns of the moment? This article examines specific songs in four plays
stretching along the length of Middleton's writing, performing, and publishing career: A Mad World, My Masters
(performed 1605 by Paul's Boys, printed 1608); A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (performed 1613 by Lady Elizabeth's
Men, printed 1630); The Witch (performed 1615–16 by King's Men, printed 1778); and The Widow (performed
1615–17 by King's Men, and printed 1652).
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Manuscripts and Early Printed Books, Collaboration, Performance Studies (Music), and 16 moreRenaissance drama, Renaissance music, Thomas Middleton, Playwriting, Early Modern English drama, Music Theatre (Drama), Renaissance Music (Music), Early Modern print culture, Paratexts, Musical Theatre History, Songs, English Renaissance Drama, Drama and theatre studies, Theatre Studies, Theatre Theory, playwriting, Early Modern English Music, and Music Composition and Songwriting
This chapter asks where (and whether) in Theobald’s Double Falsehood the writing of Shakespeare can be found. It does so by considering Shakespeare's two ‘collaborators’, first Fletcher; then Theobald. So the start of the chapter is on... more
This chapter asks where (and whether) in Theobald’s Double Falsehood the writing of Shakespeare can be found. It does so by considering Shakespeare's two ‘collaborators’, first Fletcher; then Theobald. So the start of the chapter is on early modern collaborative writing. It concentrates particularly on those instances that cannot be captured by stylometrics: where one collaborator is responsible for the dialogue of the text, and the other writes the ‘plot’ or scenario for the play. Using this model, it asks whether we can ever be sure that Cardenio contained textual material written by both Fletcher and Shakespeare.
The second half of the essay turns to Theobald, who co-wrote with scholars and playwrights throughout his life, working closely with people who chose to share material with him, but also relying on absent or dead authors whose work he translated or remoulded. How are Theobald’s collaborative practices reflected in Double Falsehood? What aspects of Cardenio, had such a play been to hand, might Theobald have borrowed – and what aspects, had such a play not been to hand, would he have created? Finally the chapter investigates where, if anywhere, in Double Falsehood, Shakespeare can be found after collaboration with Fletcher and ‘collaboration’ with Theobald?
The second half of the essay turns to Theobald, who co-wrote with scholars and playwrights throughout his life, working closely with people who chose to share material with him, but also relying on absent or dead authors whose work he translated or remoulded. How are Theobald’s collaborative practices reflected in Double Falsehood? What aspects of Cardenio, had such a play been to hand, might Theobald have borrowed – and what aspects, had such a play not been to hand, would he have created? Finally the chapter investigates where, if anywhere, in Double Falsehood, Shakespeare can be found after collaboration with Fletcher and ‘collaboration’ with Theobald?
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Eighteenth-Century Drama, John Milton, Forgery, Fakery, Fraud, Cervantes, and 10 moreJohn Fletcher, William Shakespeare, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Drama, Theatrical Adaptation, Shakespearean Adaptation, Drama and theatre studies, John Aubrey, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre, Lewis Theobald, and Literary Forgery
Most critics looking to find evidence of Shakespeare, Fletcher, or Shelton (the 1612 translator of Cervantes’s Don Quixote) in Lewis Theobald’s Double Falshood have found it; this “evidence” has been treated as proof that Double Falshood... more
Most critics looking to find evidence of Shakespeare, Fletcher, or
Shelton (the 1612 translator of Cervantes’s Don Quixote) in Lewis Theobald’s Double Falshood have found it; this “evidence” has been treated as proof that Double Falshood contains traces of a lost play, Cardenio, said to have been based on Don Quixote and written by Shakespeare and Fletcher. Yet there is only weak information linking Shakespeare to “Cardenio,” while Theobald’s putative texts, all of which are called Double Falshood (he never uses the name “Cardenio”), have no unambiguous pre- or post-Theobald history and seem to have varied in number (from one to four), age (from early modern to Restoration), and handwriting (from Shakespeare’s to Downes’s), depending on when and where they were described. In the light of the decision by Arden Shakespeare to publish “The History of Cardenio By William Shakespeare and John Fletcher Adapted for the eighteenth century stage as Double Falsehood or The Distressed Lovers by Lewis Theobald,” or Double Falsehood, as it called on the cover (on which no author is named), this essay will use new (and old) evidence to re-examine who wrote Double Falshood, and who wrote Cardenio.
Shelton (the 1612 translator of Cervantes’s Don Quixote) in Lewis Theobald’s Double Falshood have found it; this “evidence” has been treated as proof that Double Falshood contains traces of a lost play, Cardenio, said to have been based on Don Quixote and written by Shakespeare and Fletcher. Yet there is only weak information linking Shakespeare to “Cardenio,” while Theobald’s putative texts, all of which are called Double Falshood (he never uses the name “Cardenio”), have no unambiguous pre- or post-Theobald history and seem to have varied in number (from one to four), age (from early modern to Restoration), and handwriting (from Shakespeare’s to Downes’s), depending on when and where they were described. In the light of the decision by Arden Shakespeare to publish “The History of Cardenio By William Shakespeare and John Fletcher Adapted for the eighteenth century stage as Double Falsehood or The Distressed Lovers by Lewis Theobald,” or Double Falsehood, as it called on the cover (on which no author is named), this essay will use new (and old) evidence to re-examine who wrote Double Falshood, and who wrote Cardenio.
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Shakespeare, Collaboration, Shakespearean performance history, and 15 moreEighteenth-Century Drama, Forgery, Fakery, Fraud, Miguel de Cervantes, Cervantes, Literary translation, John Fletcher, Textual Criticism and Editing, Shakespeare and the book, Shakespeare adaptation, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Drama, Theatrical Adaptation, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre, Lewis Theobald, Literary Forgery, and Early Modern English Literature and Drama
Like other writers of his time, Shakespeare relied on the sensual properties of music to sophisticate and even reinterpret his lyrics: it is the fitting combination of “tune and words,” as Autolycus says in The Winter’s Tale, that “so... more
Like other writers of his time, Shakespeare relied on the sensual properties of music to sophisticate and even reinterpret his lyrics: it is the fitting combination of “tune and words,” as Autolycus says in The Winter’s Tale, that “so drew the . . . Heard . . . that all their other Sences stucke in Eares” (TLN 2484 – 86). Songs in plays, then, are bound to be sites of loss, whether or not their words are preserved. On the other hand, they can tell us more about production than any other passages of plays, even while they deny us the aural qualities that made those productions so compelling to the listener.
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Performance Studies, Songwriting, Shakespeare, and 19 morePerformance Studies (Music), Shakespearean performance history, Rehearsal studies, Renaissance music, Shakespearean Drama, Playwriting, Early Modern English drama, Paratexts, Musical Theatre History, Songs, Theatrical Adaptation, English Renaissance Drama, Rehearsal, Performance Studies and Musical Theatre, Drama and theatre studies, Theatre Studies, Theatre Theory, playwriting, Early Modern English Music, Music Composition and Songwriting, and Early Modern Literature and Culture (Especially Drama)Theatre History
‘In his youth he carried the air of the faintly obsolescent’ writes Kristine L. Haugen of Joshua Barnes, author of the following play, in the New Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. But her pronouncement is contradicted in the... more
‘In his youth he carried the air of the faintly obsolescent’ writes Kristine L. Haugen of Joshua Barnes, author of the following play, in the New Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. But her pronouncement is contradicted in the publication of this important work. Barnes’ theatrical methods are modern; what keeps his play superficially old-fashioned is what makes it exciting: the demands university performance put upon it. In London actresses possessed the stage and had done so for many years; in Cambridge actors were all male, audiences mostly male, and interests correspondingly masculine. It is the all-male nature of this production that permits the play’s highly-charged banter and invigorates its raucous sexuality.
Research Interests:
Exploring the notion that prayers were regularly spoken on public occasions, though irregularly recorded in playbooks, this article raises questions important to theatre historians, editors and actors: on what words and opinions do plays... more
Exploring the notion that prayers were regularly spoken on public occasions, though irregularly recorded in playbooks, this article raises questions important to theatre historians, editors and actors: on what words and opinions do plays of the time – in any variety of theatre – actually came to an end, and which epilogues (and linked plays) record moments of popular production?
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Shakespearean performance history, Early Modern Drama: Text and Performance, Early Modern theatre studies, and 6 moreEarly Modern English drama, Paratexts, English Renaissance Drama, Drama and theatre studies, Tudor and Stuart Drama, and Early Modern English Literature and Drama
This chapter explores Jonson's sense that public round theatres – not private square ones – are the playwright’s quintessential home. It argues that Jonson had total mastery of the breadth and depth and height of the amphitheatrical stage... more
This chapter explores Jonson's sense that public round theatres – not private square ones – are the playwright’s quintessential home. It argues that Jonson had total mastery of the breadth and depth and height of the amphitheatrical stage and the interpretative possibilities raised by using its dimensions – but also that he never really understood, or wanted to understand, its patrons.
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Performance Studies, Audience Studies, Theatrical Space, and 11 moreEarly Modern Drama: Text and Performance, Early Modern London theatre, Early Modern theatre studies, Early Modern English drama, Ben Jonson, Early Modern Drama, Globe theatre, Drama, Performance, History of Theatre, English Renaissance Drama, Drama and theatre studies, and Jonson
Actors, theatres, playgoers and court vs playhouse in the time of Shakespeare
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Performance Studies, Audience Studies, Shakespeare, and 9 moreAudience and Reception Studies, Shakespearean performance history, London theatres and playhouses, Shakespearean Drama, Early Modern London theatre, Early Modern theatre studies, Early Modern English drama, Shakespeare in Performance, and Drama and theatre studies
This chapter brings the concerns of repertory studies to a fixed space: the Curtain theatre in London, which was not permanently attached to any single company. It posits a method for thinking about plays by looking at the changing life... more
This chapter brings the concerns of repertory studies to a fixed space: the Curtain theatre in London, which was not permanently attached to any single company. It posits a method for thinking about plays by looking at the changing life and the social situation that affected the theatres themselves concentrating on the Curtain’s ‘biography’ up to and including 1598/99. It considers the Curtain’s social situation (the particular audience, actors and playwrights that occupied it), its historical situation (the specific events that by chance happened around it), its sense of itself (its branding and advertising), and its sense of situation (the fields in which it was built), focusing on three plays put on by the Lord Chamberlain’s men at the Curtain: Romeo and Juliet, Every Man in his Humour, and Henry V.
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Shakespearean performance history, Theatrical Space, Metatheatre, and 13 moreLondon theatres and playhouses, Shakespearean Drama, Early Modern London theatre, Early Modern theatre studies, Early Modern English drama, Repertory Studies, Metatheatre and theatricality, Shakespeare in Performance, King Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, Drama and theatre studies, Early modern English drama and theatre practice, and Theatrical Text
When Quince first meets his actors in A Midsummer Night's Dream, he tells them who they will be playing and a little about their fictional characters. He also distributes to the actors their ‘parts’, the pieces of paper on which their... more
When Quince first meets his actors in A Midsummer Night's Dream, he tells them who they will be playing and a
little about their fictional characters. He also distributes to the actors their ‘parts’, the pieces of paper on which
their words are written. Walking away from the meeting, the actors take their paper parts with them for memorising
at home: by the time they next gather together, each player must be word-perfect. So the players are going to
learn from a text that is only ‘part’ of the play — an idea so strange to scholars that it is still regularly called into
question. Passages in plays of the time referring to what is rehearsed often suggest that the verbal content of a
play is not the emphasis of collective rehearsal; that a general rehearsal is largely intended to determine action
that affects the group. Parts had their effect on the way a performance was watched. With parts informing so
fundamentally the way actors performed and audiences watched, they must also have affected the way
playwrights wrote.
little about their fictional characters. He also distributes to the actors their ‘parts’, the pieces of paper on which
their words are written. Walking away from the meeting, the actors take their paper parts with them for memorising
at home: by the time they next gather together, each player must be word-perfect. So the players are going to
learn from a text that is only ‘part’ of the play — an idea so strange to scholars that it is still regularly called into
question. Passages in plays of the time referring to what is rehearsed often suggest that the verbal content of a
play is not the emphasis of collective rehearsal; that a general rehearsal is largely intended to determine action
that affects the group. Parts had their effect on the way a performance was watched. With parts informing so
fundamentally the way actors performed and audiences watched, they must also have affected the way
playwrights wrote.
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Performance Studies, Shakespeare, Rehearsal studies, and 14 moreEarly Modern Drama: Text and Performance, Early Modern theatre studies, Early Modern English drama, Early Modern Drama, Shakespeare in Performance, Eighteenth-Century Theatre, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Drama, Drama, Performance, History of Theatre, English Renaissance Drama, Rehearsal, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre, Restoration drama, Seventeenth Century Theatre, and Actors Parts
This chapter explores the idea that many plays were published as ‘literature’, whilst also suggesting that ‘watching’ was a highly textual activity. The argument is in four parts. First, it addresses the roles of printed books in the... more
This chapter explores the idea that many plays were published as ‘literature’, whilst also suggesting that ‘watching’ was a highly textual activity. The argument is in four parts. First, it addresses the roles of printed books in the public theatre, considering how they were regularly read in the playhouse and, indeed, were also sold there. Secondly, it looks at literate members of the audience, asking how tablebooks were used in the playhouse and to what extent performed text was immediately turned back into written text. Third, it discusses the way the stage pandered to and used that reading audience: how the stage, hung about with words written on large boards, inscribed itself, encouraging readers to view it as, always, a semi-textual space. Finally it turns to audience ‘plots’: the printed abstracts of the spectacular entertainments provided by playwrights for what might be expected to be highly visual theatrical events. Performances on stage were continually surrounded by a marginalia of written words, it argues; the theatre was obsessed with text and performances were ‘published’ in many textual ways beyond or beside what happened in the printing houses.
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Audience and Reception Studies, Shakespearean performance history, Theatrical Space, and 19 moreMetatheatre, Early Modern Drama: Text and Performance, Shakespearean Drama, Early Modern London theatre, Early Modern English drama, Book History (History), Commonplace Books, Early Modern print culture, Audience Participation, Metatheatre and theatricality, Globe theatre, Miscellanies and commonplace books, Drama, Performance, History of Theatre, English Renaissance Drama, Street Hawkers, Drama and theatre studies, Note Taking, Early Modern Commonplace Books, and Theatrical Text
In 1778, Edmond Malone published his first contribution to Shakespeare scholarship, An Attempt to Ascertain the Order in Which the Plays Attributed to Shakspeare Were Written. He revised and republished it in 1790 and began a further... more
In 1778, Edmond Malone published his first
contribution to Shakespeare scholarship, An Attempt to
Ascertain the Order in Which the Plays Attributed to Shakspeare
Were Written. He revised and republished it in 1790 and began
a further revision of it which was printed posthumously in
1821. This Element is about the three versions of Malone’s
Attempt and the way they created, shaped, focused, directed
and misdirected our idea of the chronology and sequence of
Shakespeare’s plays. By showing Malone’s impressive, fallible
choices, adopted or adapted by later editors, it reveals how
current Shakespeare editions are, in good and bad ways,
Malonian at heart.
contribution to Shakespeare scholarship, An Attempt to
Ascertain the Order in Which the Plays Attributed to Shakspeare
Were Written. He revised and republished it in 1790 and began
a further revision of it which was printed posthumously in
1821. This Element is about the three versions of Malone’s
Attempt and the way they created, shaped, focused, directed
and misdirected our idea of the chronology and sequence of
Shakespeare’s plays. By showing Malone’s impressive, fallible
choices, adopted or adapted by later editors, it reveals how
current Shakespeare editions are, in good and bad ways,
Malonian at heart.
Research Interests:
Richard Brome, as he dedicates A Jovial Crew, or The Merry Beggars to Thomas Stanley, claims that his play had what he calls ‘the luck’ to ‘tumble last of all in the epidemical ruin of the scene’: it was the last play staged before... more
Richard Brome, as he dedicates A Jovial Crew, or The Merry
Beggars to Thomas Stanley, claims that his play had what he calls ‘the luck’ to ‘tumble last of all in the epidemical ruin of the scene’: it was the last play staged before the theatres closed in 1642 as the English Civil War began. But this dedication, written not when A Jovial Crew was performed at the Cockpit/Phoenix in 1641 or 1642, but when it was printed in 1652, gives the text a ‘certain poignancy which it would not originally have possessed’ (Butler, Theatre, 269). Put on at the conventional terminus of early modern drama, and published in the middle of a national crisis, A Jovial Crew is a work that has much to say about the history of theatre and the history of England.
Beggars to Thomas Stanley, claims that his play had what he calls ‘the luck’ to ‘tumble last of all in the epidemical ruin of the scene’: it was the last play staged before the theatres closed in 1642 as the English Civil War began. But this dedication, written not when A Jovial Crew was performed at the Cockpit/Phoenix in 1641 or 1642, but when it was printed in 1652, gives the text a ‘certain poignancy which it would not originally have possessed’ (Butler, Theatre, 269). Put on at the conventional terminus of early modern drama, and published in the middle of a national crisis, A Jovial Crew is a work that has much to say about the history of theatre and the history of England.
Research Interests: Musical Theatre, Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Early Modern English drama, Book History (History), and 18 moreBen Jonson, Caroline Drama, Sir William Davenant, Richard Brome, English Civil War Literature, Seventeenth Century Music, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Drama, Theatrical Adaptation, English Civil War, Drama and theatre studies, Early modern English drama and theatre practice, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre, Restoration drama, Seventeenth Century Theatre, John Gay, Beggars, John Suckling, and Early Modern English Literature and Drama
How did Elizabethan and Jacobean acting companies create their visual and aural effects? What materials were available to them and how did they influence staging and writing? What impact did the sensations of theatre have on early modern... more
How did Elizabethan and Jacobean acting companies create their visual and aural effects? What materials were available to them and how did they influence staging and writing? What impact did the sensations of theatre have on early modern audiences? How did the construction of the playhouses contribute to technological innovations in the theatre? What effect might these innovations have had on the writing of plays?
Shakespeare's Theatres and The Effects of Performance is a landmark collection of essays by leading international scholars addressing these and other questions to create a unique and comprehensive overview of the practicalities and realities of the theatre in the early modern period.
Shakespeare's Theatres and The Effects of Performance is a landmark collection of essays by leading international scholars addressing these and other questions to create a unique and comprehensive overview of the practicalities and realities of the theatre in the early modern period.
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Performance Studies, Shakespeare, Shakespearean performance history, and 18 moreTheatrical Space, Metatheatre, Early Modern Drama: Text and Performance, London theatres and playhouses, Shakespearean Drama, Early Modern London theatre, Early Modern theatre studies, Early Modern English drama, Metatheatre and theatricality, Shakespeare in Performance, Globe theatre, Metatheatricality, Drama, Performance, History of Theatre, English Renaissance Drama, Drama and theatre studies, Theatrical Text, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, and Teaching Shakespearean Drama
This completely new edition of The Recruiting Officer contains a freshly-edited play text, with new annotations, in modern spelling. Tiffany Stern's comprehensive and engaging introduction discusses the author's career and gives a history... more
This completely new edition of The Recruiting Officer contains a freshly-edited play text, with new annotations, in modern spelling. Tiffany Stern's comprehensive and engaging introduction discusses the author's career and gives a history of the play including its staging, critical interpretation, date and sources, putting it its context of the late Restoration and illuminating its theatrical vivacity.
Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer is set in Shrewsbury in 1704 and describes what happens in a country town when the army come to stay. With cross-dressing and confusion in plenty, this is a comedy exploring the timeless themes of love and war. One of Farquhar's last two plays, The Recruiting Officer is both entertaining and touching. It has a light, humane touch and its original depiction of a real-life provincial town comically explores the impact that ongoing warfare had on its civilian society.
Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer is set in Shrewsbury in 1704 and describes what happens in a country town when the army come to stay. With cross-dressing and confusion in plenty, this is a comedy exploring the timeless themes of love and war. One of Farquhar's last two plays, The Recruiting Officer is both entertaining and touching. It has a light, humane touch and its original depiction of a real-life provincial town comically explores the impact that ongoing warfare had on its civilian society.
Research Interests: Eighteenth-Century Drama, Restoration theatre, Restoration Comedies, Eighteenth-Century Theatre, Eighteenth-century theatre and performance, and 5 moreRestoration Comedy, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Drama, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Drama, and George Farquhar
As well as ‘play-makers’ and ‘poets’, playwrights of the early modern period were known as ‘play-patchers’ because their texts were made from separate documents. This book is the first to consider all the papers created by authors and... more
As well as ‘play-makers’ and ‘poets’, playwrights of the early modern period were known as ‘play-patchers’ because their texts were made from separate documents. This book is the first to consider all the papers created by authors and theatres by the time of the opening performance, recovering types of script not previously known to have existed. With chapters on plot-scenarios, arguments, playbills, prologues and epilogues, songs, staged scrolls, backstage-plots and parts, it shows how textually distinct production was from any single unified book. And, as performance documents were easily lost, relegated or reused, the story of a play’s patchy creation also becomes the story of its co-authorship, cuts, revisions and additions. Using a large body of fresh evidence, Documents of Performance brings a wholly new reading of printed and manuscript playbooks of the Shakespearean period, redefining what a play, and what a playwright, actually is.
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Theatre History, History of the Book, Shakespeare, Textual Scholarship, and 18 moreScholarly Editing, Textual Criticism, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Early Modern theatre studies, Early Modern English drama, Book History (History), English Renaissance Literature, Early Modern print culture, Paratexts, Textual Criticism and Editing, Songs, History of Advertising, English Renaissance Drama, Prologues, Early Modern English Music, Medieval and Early Modern Booktrade, History of Outdoor Advertising, and Actors Parts
A truly groundbreaking collaboration of original theatre history with exciting literary criticism, Shakespeare in Parts is the first book fully to explore the original form in which Shakespeare's drama overwhelmingly circulated. This was... more
A truly groundbreaking collaboration of original theatre history with exciting literary criticism, Shakespeare in Parts is the first book fully to explore the original form in which Shakespeare's drama overwhelmingly circulated. This was not the full play-text; it was not the public performance. It was the actor's part, consisting of the bare cues and speeches of each individual role. With group rehearsals rare or non-existent, the cued part alone had to furnish the actor with his character. But each such part-text was riddled with gaps and uncertainties. The actor knew what he was going to say, but not necessarily when, or why, or to whom; he may have known next to nothing of any other part. Starting with a comprehensive history of the part in early modern theatre, Simon Palfrey and Tiffany Stern's work provides a unique keyhole onto hitherto forgotten practices and techniques. It not only discovers a newly active, choice-ridden actor, but a new Shakespeare.
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Performance Studies, Manuscripts and Early Printed Books, Shakespeare, and 19 moreRare Books and Manuscripts, Shakespearean performance history, Rehearsal studies, Early Modern Drama: Text and Performance, Shakespearean Drama, Early Modern English drama, Acting, Shakespeare in Performance, English Renaissance Drama, Rehearsal, Drama and theatre studies, Metaphysics of the Self, Theatrical Text, Acting Process, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, Shakespearean literature, Shakespeare and interpretation, Actors Parts, and Theatrical Cues
Making Shakespeare offers a lively introduction to the major issues of stage and printing history, whilst also raising questions about what a ‘Shakespeare play’ actually is. It reveals how London, the theatre, the actors and the way in... more
Making Shakespeare offers a lively introduction to the major
issues of stage and printing history, whilst also raising
questions about what a ‘Shakespeare play’ actually is. It reveals how London, the theatre, the actors and the way in which the plays were written and printed all affect the ‘Shakespeare’ that we now read. Concentrating on the instability and fluidity of Shakespeare’s texts, the book discusses what happened to a manuscript between its first composition, its performance on stage and its printing, and identifies traces of the production system in the plays that we read. It argues that the versions of Shakespeare that have come down to us have inevitably been formed by the contexts from which they emerged, being shaped by, for example, the way actors received and responded to their lines, the props and music used in the theatre, or the continual revision of plays by the playhouses and printers. Allowing a fuller understanding of the texts we read and perform, Making Shakespeare is the perfect introduction to issues of stage and page. A clear, accessible read, this book allows even those with no expert knowledge to begin to contextualise Shakespeare’s plays for themselves, in ways both old and new.
issues of stage and printing history, whilst also raising
questions about what a ‘Shakespeare play’ actually is. It reveals how London, the theatre, the actors and the way in which the plays were written and printed all affect the ‘Shakespeare’ that we now read. Concentrating on the instability and fluidity of Shakespeare’s texts, the book discusses what happened to a manuscript between its first composition, its performance on stage and its printing, and identifies traces of the production system in the plays that we read. It argues that the versions of Shakespeare that have come down to us have inevitably been formed by the contexts from which they emerged, being shaped by, for example, the way actors received and responded to their lines, the props and music used in the theatre, or the continual revision of plays by the playhouses and printers. Allowing a fuller understanding of the texts we read and perform, Making Shakespeare is the perfect introduction to issues of stage and page. A clear, accessible read, this book allows even those with no expert knowledge to begin to contextualise Shakespeare’s plays for themselves, in ways both old and new.
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Performance Studies, Shakespeare, Performance Studies (Music), and 16 moreShakespearean performance history, Early Modern Drama: Text and Performance, London theatres and playhouses, Printing History, Shakespearean Drama, Early Modern London theatre, Early Modern English drama, Book History (History), Shakespeare in Performance, Stage Props, Shakespeare and Music, Globe theatre, Drama, Performance, History of Theatre, English Renaissance Drama, Drama and theatre studies, and History of Books, Printing, and Publishing
The Rivals is set in Bath in 1775, and features three lovers fighting for the hand of Lydia Languish. Lydia, however, has her heart set on eloping with someone unsuitable. Little does she guess that the impoverished Ensign currently... more
The Rivals is set in Bath in 1775, and features three lovers fighting for the hand of Lydia Languish. Lydia, however, has her heart set on eloping with someone unsuitable. Little does she guess that the impoverished Ensign currently courting her is wellborn Captain Absolute in disguise. Absolute’s greatest rival is – himself. Famous for its verbal whimsicality, The Rivals is as much about words as plot. Bob Acres has a ‘new method of swearing’; Mrs Malaprop, ‘queen of the dictionary’, so often confounds one word with another that the term ‘malapropism’ has been named for her. Satirizing pretension and sentimentalism, The Rivals promotes the cause of youth against age, knowledge against ignorance, and happiness above everything. Samuel Johnson called it one of the ‘best comedies of the age’.
Research Interests:
Leir was a source for Shakespeare; in reading it, we can see the raw material from which Shakespeare worked.
Research Interests:
Attention is often given to the performance of a text, but not to the shaping process behind that performance. The question of rehearsal is seldom confronted directly, though important textual moments - like revision - are often... more
Attention is often given to the performance of a text, but not to the shaping process behind that performance. The question of rehearsal is seldom confronted directly, though important textual moments - like revision - are often attributed to it. Whatismore, up until now, facts about theatrical rehearsal have been considered irrecoverable.
In this groundbreaking new study, Tiffany Stern gathers together two centuries' worth of historical material which shows how actors received and responded to their parts, and how rehearsal affected the creation and revision of plays. This is the first history of the subject, from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth. It examines the nature and changing content of rehearsal, drawing on a mass of autobiographical, textual, and journalistic sources, and in so doing throws new light on textual revision and transforms accepted notions of Renaissance, Restoration, and eighteenth-century theatrical practice. Plotting theatrical change over time, this book will revolutionize the fields of textual and theatre history alike.
In this groundbreaking new study, Tiffany Stern gathers together two centuries' worth of historical material which shows how actors received and responded to their parts, and how rehearsal affected the creation and revision of plays. This is the first history of the subject, from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth. It examines the nature and changing content of rehearsal, drawing on a mass of autobiographical, textual, and journalistic sources, and in so doing throws new light on textual revision and transforms accepted notions of Renaissance, Restoration, and eighteenth-century theatrical practice. Plotting theatrical change over time, this book will revolutionize the fields of textual and theatre history alike.