A London Life In The Brazen Age

Francis Langley was a man on the make if there ever was one. He is the entrepreneur who built the Swan Theater and, until now, this meager fact is nearly all there has been to know about him. Yet, William Ingram suggests, "this is like thinking of Henry Clay Folger or Henry E. Huntington only as the founders of libraries. His life was multifarious, and the Swan was but one part of it; to understand the man, we must know what else was on his mind." This book is a rich account of Langley's role in the development of the Elizabethan theater, and a substantial contribution to the social and the economic history of Elizabethan London. Langley, an arrogant, ruthless, violent man of deals and usury, serves as the index to the London of his times. He was, Ingram assures us, imbued "with that spirit of enthusiasm and expansion...of ostentation and aggrandizement, that lent itself so readily to the pens of the social satirists of the period."

Philip Henslowe's Rose was Elizabethan London's first South Bank playhouse. This book sets the background of a working theatre against which the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries can be understood.

Playing Companies and Commerce in Shakespeare's Time, first published in 2011, examines the nature of commercial relations among the theatre companies in London during the time of Shakespeare. Roslyn Knutson argues that the playing companies cooperated in the adoption of business practices that would enable the theatrical enterprise to flourish. Suggesting the guild as a model of economic cooperation, Knutson considers the networks of fellowship among players, the marketing strategies of the repertory, and company relationships with playwrights and members of the book trade. The book challenges two entrenched views about theatrical commerce: that companies engaged in cut-throat rivalry to drive one another out of business and that companies based business decisions on the personal and professional quarrels of the players and dramatists with whom they worked. This important contribution to theatre history will be of interest to scholars as well as historians.

The Oxford Handbook of the Age of Shakespeare presents a broad sampling of current historical scholarship on the period of Shakespeare's career that will assist and stimulate scholars of his poems and plays. Rather than merely attempting to summarize the historical 'background' to Shakespeare, individual chapters seek to exemplify a wide variety of perspectives and methodologies currently used in historical research on the early modern period that can inform close analysis of literature. Different sections examine political history at both the national and local levels; relationships between intellectual culture and the early modern political imagination; relevant aspects of religious and social history; and facets of the histories of architecture, the visual arts and music. Topics treated include the emergence of an early modern 'public sphere' and its relationship to drama during Shakespeare's lifetime; the role of historical narratives in shaping the period's views on the workings of politics; attitudes about the role of emotion in social life; cultures of honour and shame and the rituals and literary forms through which they found expression; crime and murder; and visual expressions of ideas of moral disorder and natural monstrosity, in printed images as well as garden architecture.

This book offers an accessible introduction to England’s sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century playing industry and a fresh account of the architecture, multiple uses, communities, crowds, and proprietors of playhouses. It builds on recent scholarship and new documentary and archaeological discoveries to answer the questions: what did playhouses do, what did they look like, and how did they function? The book will accordingly introduce readers to a rich and exciting spectrum of "play" and playhouses, not only in London but also around England. The detailed but wide-ranging case studies examined here go beyond staged drama to explore early modern sport, gambling, music, drinking, and animal baiting; they recover the crucial influence of female playhouse owners and managers; and they recognise rich provincial performance cultures as well as the burgeoning of London’s theatre industry. This book will have wide appeal with readers across Shakespeare, early modern performance studies, theatre history, and social history.

Stratford made the man, but London made the phenomenon that is Shakespeare. This volume takes an historical approach to Shakespeare's connections with London. It explores Stratford's various links with the capital, significant locations for Shakespeare's work, people with whom he associated, his resistance to pressure from the City authorities, and the cultural diversity of early modern London. Among many aspects of his life in the City and its environs, it covers the playhouses in Shoreditch, his associations with Bishopsgate, his brother Edmund's residence on Bankside, and elements of London life that went into the making of Falstaff. Being 'forest born', he was always an outsider and could never have been, or felt, accepted as a citizen. We find him repeatedly a sojourner in the City, on the move. His home and family lay in Stratford. Despite his success in the capital, we might almost imagine him to have been a reluctant Londoner. Shakespeare and London draws on a range of documentary sources including City parish registers, county sessions records and the archives of London's Bridewell Hospital. It sets out details about those who inhabited Shakespeare's milieu, or played some part in shaping his writing and acting career. This volume is Ideal reading for undergraduates, graduates, and specialists of Shakespeare studies.

A thorough analysis of Philip Henslowe's diary which provides a unique source of information on Elizabethan repertory theatre.