Cumberland Westmorland Gloucestershire

The Records of Early English Drama volumes make available historical transcripts that provide evidence of early English drama, music, ceremonial dance, and other forms of communal public entertainment in Britain from the Middle Ages to 1642, when the Puritans closed the London theatres.

Since the appearance of the first volume in 1979, the Records of Early English Drama (REED) series has made available an accurate and useable transcription of all surviving documentary evidence of dramatic, ceremonial, and minstrel activity in Great Britain up to the closing of the theatres in 1642. Although they are immensely valuable to scholars, the REED volumes sometimes prove difficult for students to use without considerable assistance. With this book, Elza Tiner aims to make the records accessible for classroom use. The contributors to the volume describe the various ways in which students can learn from working with these documents. Divided into five sections, the volume illustrates how specific disciplines can use the Records to provide resources for students including ways to teach the historical documents of early English drama, training students in acting and producing, historical contexts for the interpretation of literature, as well as the study of local history, women's studies, and historical linguistics. As a practical and much needed companion to the REED volumes, Teaching with the Records of Early English Drama will prove invaluable to both students and teachers of Medieval English Drama.

Based in records and iconography, this book surveys medieval festival playing in Britain more comprehensively than any other work to date. The study presents an inclusive view of the drama in the British Isles, from Kilkenny to Great Yarmouth, from Scotland to Cornwall. It offers detailed readings of individual plays-including the York Creed Play, Pentecost and Corpus Christi plays and the little studied Bodley plays, among others - as well as a summary of what is known of their production. Clifford Davidson here extends the usual chronological range to include work typically categorized as early modern, enabling a juxtaposition of earlier plays with later plays to yield a better understanding of both. Complementing documentary evidence with iconographic detail and citation of music, he pinpoints a number of common misconceptions about medieval drama. By organizing the study around the rituals of the liturgical seasons, he clarifies the relationship between liturgical feast and dramatic celebration.

Recent studies of particular areas during the Civil War have shown how kinship and social and educational ties, far from reinforcing county isolationism, frequently drew inhabitants into a far wider network and divided existing loyalties. Following this approach, Dr Warmington's examination of the history of Gloucestershire during the period begins with the descent into war between 1640 and 1642, showing how the two sides formed and why the Parliamentarians had the more durable war machine. He goes on to consider the anarchic situation between 1645 and 1649 and the series of new experiments in government which followed until 1660, undertaken by an almost entirely new governing group of minor gentlemen, elevated through military service to the regime and by religious affiliations. The attempted rebellion of 1659 is examined in detail, and the book concludes with a look at the Restoration of the Stuart dynasty, the Anglican Church, and the sons of the pre-war county ruling elite, exploring how the new regime compared with its Cromwellian predecessors.ANDREW WARMINGTONwas formerly senior research assistant in history at the University of Durham, following a First Class degree from York and a D.Phil. from St Peter's College, Oxford. He is now a freelance research analyst.

In this first full history of the first great Elizabethan play company, Laurie Johnson shows the vital role of Leicester's Men in developing the main features of Shakespearean theatre. Unearthing new discoveries from wide-ranging primary material, he tells the fascinating stories of the lives of the earliest Elizabethan players.

This book examines theatre and religion in provincial England from the early Tudors to 1660.

Focusing on a period (c.1577-1594) that is often neglected in Elizabethan theater histories, this study considers Shakespeare's involvement with the various London acting companies before his membership in the Lord Chamberlain's Men in 1594. Locating Shakespeare in the confusing records of the early London theater scene has long been one of the many unresolved problems in Shakespeare studies and is a key issue in theatre history, Shakespeare biography, and historiography. The aim in this book is to explain, analyze, and assess the competing claims about Shakespeare's pre-1594 acting company affiliations. Schoone-Jongen does not demonstrate that one particular claim is correct but provides a possible framework for Shakespeare's activities in the 1570s and 1580s, an overview of both London and provincial playing, and then offers a detailed analysis of the historical plausibility and probability of the warring claims made by biographers, ranging from the earliest sixteenth-century references to contemporary arguments. Full chapters are devoted to four specific acting companies, their activities, and a summary and critique of the arguments for Shakespeare's involvement in them (The Queen's Men, Strange's Men, Pembroke's Men, and Sussex's Men), a further chapter is dedicated to the proposition Shakespeare's first theatrical involvement was in a recusant Lancashire household, and a final chapter focuses on arguments for Shakespeare's membership in a half dozen other companies (most prominently Leicester's Men). Shakespeare's Companies simultaneously opens up twenty years of theatrical activity to inquiry and investigation while providing a critique of Shakespearean biographers and their historical methodologies.

This book looks at popular belief through a detailed study of the cheapest printed wares in London in the century after the Reformation.