Book contents
- Performances at Court in the Age of Shakespeare
- Performances at Court in the Age of Shakespeare
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Textual Note
- General Introduction
- Part I Elizabethan Court Theatre
- Chapter 1 Palamon and Arcite: Early Elizabethan Court Theatre
- Chapter 2 Revels at the Court of Elizabeth I, 1594–1603
- Chapter 3 Multiple Marlowe: Doctor Faustus and Court Performance
- Chapter 4 The Court Theatre Response to the Public Theatre Debate in A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Part II The Jacobean Tradition
- Part III Reassessing the Stuart Masque
- Part IV The Material Conditions of Performances at Court
- General Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 4 - The Court Theatre Response to the Public Theatre Debate in A Midsummer Night’s Dream
from Part I - Elizabethan Court Theatre
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 October 2019
- Performances at Court in the Age of Shakespeare
- Performances at Court in the Age of Shakespeare
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Textual Note
- General Introduction
- Part I Elizabethan Court Theatre
- Chapter 1 Palamon and Arcite: Early Elizabethan Court Theatre
- Chapter 2 Revels at the Court of Elizabeth I, 1594–1603
- Chapter 3 Multiple Marlowe: Doctor Faustus and Court Performance
- Chapter 4 The Court Theatre Response to the Public Theatre Debate in A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Part II The Jacobean Tradition
- Part III Reassessing the Stuart Masque
- Part IV The Material Conditions of Performances at Court
- General Bibliography
- Index
Summary
A Midsummer Night’s Dream was probably not originally composed for a court wedding. Yet, as Janna Segal makes clear, it is very likely that the play was revised for performance at court, and, as such, the play emblematizes the power dynamics at work between the Elizabethan court and theatre companies. Critics concerned with the import of Midsummer’s 'rude mechanicals' (3.2.9) have generally left unattended the relationship between their theatrical practice and antitheatrical discourse. The play’s critical posture towards the antitheatricalist tracts’ characterization of the public theatre as an idle pastime, Segal explains, is first suggested by the presence of the 'mechanicals' (3.2.9) as a 'company' of players (1.2.1). Besides, the players’ recurring anxiety over the effects of their performance on the 'ladies' of Theseus’s court clearly invokes repeated warnings from John Northbrooke, Stephen Gosson, and John Rainoldes that women (especially) are vulnerable at the playhouses. So, more generally speaking, the actors-within-the-action satirically engage with the major criticisms of the public theatre voiced by eminent Puritans.
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- Performances at Court in the Age of Shakespeare , pp. 64 - 76Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019