Annotated Bibliography

Theatres

To read more about the theatres that performed Shakespeare’s plays, and playgoing in Shakespeare’s London, see the third edition of Andrew Gurr’s Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) and The Shakespearean Stage 1574-1642 (1992; 4th edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). See also Peter Thomson’s Shakespeare’s Professional Career (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) and Steven Mullaney’s The Place of the Stage: License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1988). Jonathan Bate and Russell Jackson’s Shakespeare: An Illustrated Stage History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) provides information about ‘Shakespeare’s Elizabethan Stages’ as well as an illustrated overview through the ages to the 1990s and Jean Howard’s Theatre of a City: The Places of London Comedy, 1598-1642 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007) explores the role of theatre in making sense of the new forms of social life and social identity in London from 1598-1642.

For details of the day-to-day activities and operations of the Rose theatre as recorded by the Elizabethan theatre owner Phillip Henslowe in the 1590s see Henslowe’s Diary edited by R. A. Foakes (1961; 2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) and Neil Carson’s A Companion to Henslowe’s Diary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Carol Chillington Rutter’s Documents of the Rose Playhouse (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984) uses primary sources relating to Henslowe and his accounts to offer fresh interpretations of a working theatre in Shakespeare’s London.

On the Globe reconstruction, see Shakespeare’s Globe: A Theatrical Experiment edited by Christie Carson and Farah Karim-Cooper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) and Shakespeare’s Globe Rebuilt edited by Ronnie Mulryne and Margaret Shewring (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) which records the result of years of academic and practical scholarship informing the construction of the Globe theatre that currently stands in Southwark. While acknowledging that inference and compromise have inevitably characterised the reconstruction of the ‘unattainable ideal’ of the original Globe, they draw together a range of research on reconstructing and performing at the Globe. Steve Sohmer’s Shakespeare’s Mystery Play: The Opening of the Globe Theatre 1599 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1999) uses astrological, astronomical, calendrical and historical data to support the thesis that Julius Caesar was the first play to be performed at the Globe Theatre on 12 June 1599.

Playing Companies

Andrew Gurr’s The Shakespeare Company, 1594-1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004a) and The Shakespearian Playing Companies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) are the first port of call for research on theatre companies in Shakespeare’s day. See also Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004b) and The Shakespearean Stage (1992; 4th edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) by the same author. These last two books by Gurr provide extensive descriptions of the audience, stage and culture for which Shakespeare wrote. See ‘Audience’ (on this site) for more information.

Henslowe’s Diary edited by R. A. Foakes (1961; 2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) gives Phillip Henslowe’s daily accounts of affairs at the Rose Theatre and is the focus of Neil Carson’s A Companion to Henslowe’s Diary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Russ McDonald’s The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: An Introduction with Documents (Boston, New York: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2001) provides introductory information and extracts from historical documents relating to performance in Shakespeare’s England. See also Edel Lamb’s Performing Childhood in the Early Modern Theatre: The Children’s Playing Companies (1599-1613) (London: Palgrave, 2009) and Catherine Belsey’s ‘Shakespeare’s Little Boys: Theatrical Apprenticeship and the Construction of Childhood’ in Rematerializing Shakespeare: Authority and Representation on the Early Modern English Stage (London: Palgrave, 2005) for detailed research on boy actors and children on the stage in Shakespeare’s day.

For more information on theatre companies and Shakespeare’s interaction with them as player and playwright, see David Grote’s The Best Actors in the World: Shakespeare and his Acting Company (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2002). See also Roslyn Lander Knutson’s Playing Companies and Commerce in Shakespeare’s Time (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001) which challenges the view of cut-throat rivalry between companies and explores commercial relations between them; and Terence Schoone-Jongen’s Shakespeare’s Companies: William Shakespeare’s Early Career and the Acting Companies, 1577-1594 (Ashgate, 2007) which explores the historical changes and theatrical activity in order to shed light on Shakespeare’s activities before 1594.

Audiences

The experience of audiences in Shakespeare’s day is a lively topic of recent scholarship in such works as Andrew Gurr’s Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), The Shakespearean Stage: 1574-1642 by the same author (1992; 4th edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), and Steven Mullaney’s The Place of the Stage: License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England (The University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London, 1988). Anthony Dawson and Paul Yachnin provide lively discussions about Elizabethan theatregoing in a variety of contexts in The Culture of Playgoing in Shakespeare’s England: A Collaborative Debate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) and Stephen Orgel explores the construction of gender in early modern England and its performance on the stage in Impersonations: the performance of gender in Shakespeare’s England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

For critical and satirical accounts of playgoers from Elizabethan observers see Thomas Dekker’s The Gull’s Hornbook (1609) and Stephen Gossen’s The School of Abuse: Containing a pleasant invective against poets, pipers, players, jesters, etc (London: Shakespeare Society, 1841). Extracts from both of these can also be found in Tanya Pollard’s Shakespeare’s Theatre: A Sourcebook (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), a book which contains annotated extracts from Elizabethan and Jacobean texts on the theatre from a period of time ‘that saw the explosive rise of the theatre’ and ‘also saw some of history’s most furious attacks on the theatre’ (x).

Actors and Acting

For more information on actors and their scripts, see Tiffany Stern’s Making Shakespeare: From Stage to Page (London; New York: Routledge, 2004), Shakespeare in Parts, co-authored by Simon Palfrey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) and Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). See also Stern’s Documents of Performance in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) in which she explores how the ‘printed and manuscript plays contain “shadows” of their patchwork construction’ and draws attention to the existence of texts and discourses, such as ‘learnt actors’ parts; backstage plots; and songs, scrolls, prologues and epilogues’ that would have made up a performance in Early Modern England (253).

Andrew Gurr’s The Shakespeare Company, 1594-1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) and The Shakespearean Stage (1992; 4th edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) also provide the latest research on actors and playing companies. Russ McDonald’s The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: An Introduction with Documents (Boston, New York: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2001) provides introductory information and extracts from historical documents that are also relevant to actors and their scripts. See also Peter Thomson’s Shakespeare’s Professional Career (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) for more information.

Stage Properties

To read more in this area, see Andrew Gurr’s The Shakespearean Stage (1992; 4th edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). In addition, Documents of the Rose Playhouse by Carol Chillington Rutter (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984) and R. A. Foake’s edition of Henslowe’s Diary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) include historical documents that provide important theatrical information. See also John Meagher’s Pursuing Shakespeare’s Dramaturgy: Some Contexts, Resources, Strategies in his Playmaking (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003) and Gwynne Blakemore Evans’ Elizabethan-Jacobean Drama (London: A & C Black, 1987) for detailed information on stage properties, costumes and the stage and their effects on Shakespeare’s dramaturgy.

For recent research on implicit stage directions in Shakespeare’s plays and scholarly debate on original staging practices, see Tim Fitzpatrick’s “Stage Management, Dramaturgy and Spatial Semiotics in Shakespeare’s Dialogue” Theatre Research International 24.1 (1999), pp.1-23 and “Playwrights with Foresight: staging resources in the Elizabethan playhouses” Theatre Notebook 56.2 (2002), pp. 85-116, and Andrew Gurr and Mariko Ichikawa’s Staging in Shakespeare’s Theatres (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000). See also Bruce Smith’s The Key of Green: Passion and Perception in Renaissance Culture (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2009).

Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory by Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) examines clothing in early modern England as a form of wealth and personal identity, and Costume in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936) by M. Channing Linthicum provides a survey of the use of colour and symbolism in drama of the period. Rich Apparel: Clothing and the Law in Henry VIII’s England, by Maria Hayward provides further details of the clothes worn across the social spectrum in the early part of the sixteenth century, as well as the Tudor sumptuary laws and exceptions to these laws (including players and entertainers). Although she writes about the period before he playing companies of Shakespeare’s day, the book includes useful information and a handy glossary of clothing and colours of the period that could be useful for modern readers of Shakespeare.

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