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 1 - Palamon and Arcite: Early Elizabethan Court Theatre
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
As Richard Dutton shows in the volume’s opening chapter, Richard Edwards’s Palamon and Arcite (1566) is not extant, but we know more about its performance than we do about virtually any other play in the early modern period. These accounts tell us at least three important things about early Elizabethan court theatre, Dutton explains. First, they spell out in particular detail a fact that we in a sense know but need constantly to bear in mind about court performance: that the Queen shared the stage with the performers and was as much on display as they were. Second, that despite the strict attention to formal hierarchy in the placement of the audience, the atmosphere was far from stuffy or hidebound; the Queen and her guests treated the performers with an informality that reminds us of the courtly shows in Love’s Labours Lost and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And third, that early Elizabethan court theatre could be remarkably realistic in style, unlike much of the staging in the commercial theatres later in the reign.
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- Performances at Court in the Age of Shakespeare , pp. 17 - 34Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019