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The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 1

Name: The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 1
Author: E. K. Chambers

by E. K. Chambers

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Language: en4,500 downloads on Project Gutenberg

Subjects

Great Britain -- History -- Elizabeth, 1558-1603 Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Stage history -- To 1625 English drama -- Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600 -- History and criticism Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Stage history -- England -- London Theaters -- England -- London -- History -- 16th century Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Relations with actors Theater -- England -- London -- History -- 16th century Acting -- History -- 16th century

In: Plays/Films/Dramas·History - British

Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #66003.

About this book

The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 1 is a scholarly survey of the theatrical world that flourished in England from the late‑Tudor court to the early years after Shakespeare’s death. Edited by E. K. Chambers, the work opens with a reflective preface dated January 1923, in which the author explains that this volume is the first installment of a larger project that began with an abandoned “little book on Shakespeare” and has been shaped by two decades of research, revisions, and the contributions of contemporary scholars. The book is organized into five “books”: an extensive description of the Elizabethan court and its pageantry, an analysis of the tension between court‑backed players and Puritan opposition, detailed accounts of individual companies and theatres, and finally a study of surviving plays as documentary evidence of the institution itself. The opening pages also provide a thorough list of authorities, illustrating the author’s intent to synthesize the extensive, often contradictory scholarship that preceded him.

Written in a measured, academic prose typical of early‑20th‑century historical monographs, the text assumes a reader comfortable with dense footnotes, extensive bibliographies, and the occasional archaic notation for uncertain dates. Its tone is that of a diligent historian rather than a dramatist, emphasizing institutional development, economic conditions, and the interplay of politics and performance. Scholars of early modern English history, theatre historians, and graduate students investigating Shakespeare’s cultural context will find the volume a valuable reference; it also offers informed readers of Elizabethan drama a richly documented backdrop for the plays they already know.

The opening · free to read

In 1903 I explained the origin of The Mediaeval Stage out of preliminary investigations for a little book on Shakespeare. That little book is still unwritten, and perhaps it was only a mirage, since working days have their term, and all that I can now offer, after an interval of twenty years, is another instalment of prolegomena. It has been in hand, more or less, throughout that period, which now ends felicitously with the tercentenary of the First Folio. But it has often been laid aside for other literary diversions, and still more often through the preoccupations of a life mainly concerned with activities remote from letters. As a result, I have constantly had to take account of new material furnished by the research or the speculations of others; and I only hope that in the process of revision I have succeeded in achieving a reasonable completeness of statement and a reasonable consistency in the conclusions of chapters drafted at very different dates.

Much in these volumes is of course mere archaeology, but the historian may find some interest in the development of the stage as an institution, and in the social and economic conditions which made such a development possible. My First Book is devoted to a description, perhaps disproportionate, of the Elizabethan Court, and of the ramifications in pageant and progress, tilt and mask, of that instinct for spectacular mimesis, which the Renaissance inherited from the Middle Ages, and of which the drama is itself the most important manifestation. The Second Book gives an account of the settlement of the players in London, of their conflict, backed by the Court, with the tendencies of Puritanism, and of the place which they ultimately found in the monarchical polity. To the Third and Fourth belong the more pedestrian task of following in detail the fortunes of the individual playing companies and the individual theatres, with such fullness as the available records permit. The Fifth deals with the surviving plays, not in their literary aspect, which lies outside my plan, but as documents helping to throw light upon the history of the institution which produced them. I have not for the most part carried my investigations beyond the death of Shakespeare, and although I have sometimes regretted that I did not push on to the closing of the theatres, the decision not to do so has long been irretrievable.

Obviously I am treading a region far more carefully charted by predecessors than that of The Mediaeval Stage; but the progress of Elizabethan scholarship during recent years has been so great as to render a fresh attempt at a synthesis justifiable. I am conscious of a deeper debt than I can express to many fellow-workers, notably to my friends Dr. W. W. Greg and Mr. A. W. Pollard and Professor Feuillerat of Rennes, and to a growing band of American students, of whom I may name Professor C. W. Wallace and Mr. J. T. Murray as examples.