Literature and the theatre to 1660

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521631563.021

19 - Literature and the theatre to 1660

from 4 - The earlier Stuart era

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008

Martin Butler

Edited by

David Loewenstein and

Janel Mueller

Show author details

David Loewenstein: Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Janel Mueller: Affiliation:
University of Chicago

Book contents

Get access

Summary

The story of early Stuart theatre is a narrative almost entirely confined to England and Wales. The austere Calvinism of Stuart Scotland did not encourage the development of secular theatre, and the kirk bitterly resented the English travelling companies that occasionally visited Edinburgh while James still resided there. Once the court went south in 1603, leaving the kingdom without a king, Scotland’s fragile drama withered away to nothing. The only significant plays written by a Scot during the entire period were Sir William Alexander’s Monarchic Tragedies (1607) – four closet dramas in intricately Senecan style that were not intended for performance, by a courtier who followed James to London and became completely anglicised. Ireland had a more developed native drama – at Kilkenny, ecclesiastical pageants survived into the 1630s – and English companies occasionally visited Dublin, but the only sustained attempt to establish a professional theatre was the Werburgh Street playhouse, opened by John Ogilby in 1637. These were the years when Lord Deputy Wentworth was living at Dublin in ostentatiously vice-regal style, and Ogilby, his children’s tutor, received a new office of Irish Master of the Revels. But since Werburgh Street performed an essentially English repertoire, with actors and a playwright (James Shirley) recruited from London, it inevitably exhibited the tensions of cultural colonialism. Shirley’s prologues express an outsider’s discomfort with the Dublin audience, and although he wrote one play on Irish history, St Patrick for Ireland (c. 1639), it represented the locals as sullen, barbaric and needing acculturation.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of Early Modern English Literature , pp. 565 - 602

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521631563.021 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agnew, Jean-Christophe, Worlds Apart: The Market and the Theater in Anglo-American Thought, 1550–1750, Cambridge University Press, 1986.CrossRef Google Scholar

Anna, Jean Mill, Mediaeval Plays in Scotland (Edinburgh : W. Blackwood, 1927).Google Scholar

Barroll, Leeds, ‘A New History for Shakespeare and his Time’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 39 (1988).CrossRef Google Scholar

Baugh, A. C., ‘A Seventeenth-century Play List’, Modern Language Review 13 (1918) –11.Google Scholar

Bawcutt, Nigel, The Control and Censorship of Caroline Drama, Oxford University Press, 1996.Google Scholar

Beaumont, Francis and John, Fletcher, The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, gen. ed. Bowers, Fredson, 10 vols., Cambridge University Press, 1966–96.Google Scholar

Bentley, Gerald E., The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 7 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941–68.Google Scholar

Boddy, G.W., ‘Players of Interludes in North Yorkshire in the Early Seventeenth Century’, North Yorkshire County Record Office Journal 3 (1976).Google Scholar

Brown, Cedric C., (ed.), Patronage, Politics and Literary Traditions in England, 1558–1658, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993.Google Scholar

Bruster, Douglas, Drama and the Market in the Age of Shakespeare, Cambridge University Press, 1992.CrossRef Google Scholar

Butler, Martin, Theatre and Crisis, 1632–1642, Cambridge University Press, 1984.Google Scholar

Butler, Martin (ed.), Re-Presenting Ben Jonson: Text, History, Performance, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999.CrossRef Google Scholar

Chakravorty, Swapan, Society and Politics in the Plays of Thomas Middleton, Oxford University Press, 1995.Google Scholar

Chambers, E. K., The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923.Google Scholar

Clare, Janet, ‘Art Made Tongue-Tied by Authority’: Elizabethan and Jacobean Dramatic Censorship, Manchester University Press, 1991.Google Scholar

Clark, Ira, Professional Playwrights: Massinger, Ford, Shirley and Brome, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992.Google Scholar

Clark, Sandra, The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994.Google Scholar

Cogswell, Thomas, ‘Thomas Middleton and the Court, 1624: A Game at Chess in Context’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 47 (1984).CrossRef Google Scholar

Cox, John D. and Kastan, David S. (eds.), A New History of Early English Drama, New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.Google Scholar

Dollimore, Jonathan, Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, Brighton: Harvester Press, 1984. 2nd edn, University of Chicago Press, 1989.Google Scholar

Durston, Christopher, and Eales, Jacqueline (eds.), The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560–1700, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996.CrossRef Google Scholar

Dutton, Richard, Mastering the Revels: The Regulation and Censorship of English Renaissance Drama, London: Macmillan 1991.CrossRef Google Scholar

Findlay, Bill (ed.), A History of Scottish Theatre, Edinburgh: Polygon, 1998.Google Scholar

Finkelpearl, Philip J., John Marston of the Middle Temple: An Elizabethan Dramatist in His Social Setting, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969.CrossRef Google Scholar

Fletcher, A. J., Drama, Performance and Polity in Pre-Cromwellian Ireland, Cork University Press, 2000.CrossRef Google Scholar

Gurr, Andrew, The Shakespearean Playing Companies, Oxford University Press, 1996.CrossRef Google Scholar

Harbage, Alfred, Cavalier Drama, Oxford University Press, 1936.Google Scholar

Harbage, Alfred, Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions, New York: Macmillan, 1952.Google Scholar

Haynes, Jonathan, The Social Relations of Jonson’s Theatre, Cambridge University Press, 1992.Google Scholar

Healy, Thomas and Jonathan, Sawday (eds.), Literature and the English Civil War, Cambridge University Press, 1990.Google Scholar

Heinemann, Margot, Puritanism and Theatre: Thomas Middleton and Opposition Drama under the Early Stuarts, Cambridge University Press, 1980.CrossRef Google Scholar

Heywood, Thomas, An Apology for Actors, London: N. Okes, 1611. Mod. edn, ,The Shakespeare Society, 1841.Google Scholar

Hotson, Leslie, The Commonwealth and Restoration Stage, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928.CrossRef Google Scholar

Howard, Douglas (ed.), Philip Massinger: A Critical Reassessment, Cambridge University Press, 1985.Google Scholar

Hunter, G. K., English Drama 1586–1642: The Age of Shakespeare, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.Google Scholar

Jacob, J. R. and Raylor, T., ‘Opera and Obedience: Thomas Hobbes and A Proposition for Advancement of Moralitie by Sir William Davenant’, The Seventeenth Century, 6 (1991).Google Scholar

Jones, Inigo, The Theatre of the Stuart Court: including the complete designs for productions at court,…together with their texts and historical documentation, ed. Orgel, Stephen and Strong, Roy, 2 vols., London: Sotheby Parke Bernet, and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.Google Scholar

Jonson, Ben, The Works of Ben Jonson, ed. Herford, C. H., Simpson, Percy and Simpson, Evelyn, 11 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925–52. Rpt, 1988.Google Scholar

Kernan, Alvin, Shakespeare, the King’s Playwright: Theatre in the Stuart Court 1603–1613, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995.Google Scholar

Kirsch, Arthur C., Jacobean Dramatic Perspectives, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1972.Google Scholar

Maguire, Nancy Klein, Regicide and Restoration, Cambridge University Press, 1992.Google Scholar

Malcolmson, Christina, ‘As Tame as the Ladies: Politics and Gender in The Changeling’, English Literary Renaissance 20 (1990) –39CrossRef Google Scholar

Martin, Butler, ‘A Provincial Masque of “Comus”’, Renaissance Drama n.s. 17 (1986) –73).Google Scholar

Martin, Butler, ‘A New Way to Pay Old Debts: Massinger’s Grim Comedy’, in English Comedy, ed. Cordner, Michael, Holland, Peter and Kerrigan, John (Cambridge University Press, 1994) –36Google Scholar

Martin, Butler, Theatre and Crisis, 1632–1642 (Cambridge University Press, 1984) –6.Google Scholar

McMullan, Gordon, The Politics of Unease in the Plays of John Fletcher, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994.Google Scholar

Milhous, Judith and Hume, Robert, ‘New Light on English Acting Companies in 1646, 1648, and 1660’, Review of English Studies, n.s., 42 (1991).Google Scholar

Mullaney, Steven, The Place of the Stage: License, Play and Power in Renaissance England, University of Chicago Press, 1988.Google Scholar

Mulryne, J. R. and Shewring, M. (eds.), Theatre and Government under the Early Stuarts, Cambridge University Press, 1993.Google Scholar

Neill, M. (ed.), John Ford: Critical Essays, Cambridge University Press, 1988.Google Scholar

Nigel, Bawcutt, ‘Was Thomas Middleton a Puritan Dramatist?’, Modern Language Review 94 (1999) –39Google Scholar

Paster, Gail K., The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993.Google Scholar

Peck, Linda Levy (ed.), The Mental World of the Jacobean Court, Cambridge University Press, 1991.Google Scholar

Philip, Ayres, ‘Jonson,Northampton, and the “Treason” in Sejanus’,Modern Philology 80 (1983) –63.Google Scholar

Potter, Lois, Secret Rites and Secret Writing: Royalist Literature, 1641–1660, Cambridge University Press, 1989.Google Scholar

Prothero, G. W., ‘A Seventeenth-century Account Book’, English Historical Review 7 (1892)Google Scholar

Randall, Dale B. J., Winter Fruit: English Drama 1642–1660, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995.Google Scholar

Salingar, Leo G., Dramatic Form in Shakespeare and the Jacobeans, Cambridge University Press, 1986.Google Scholar

Salingar, Leo G., Harrison, G. and Cochrane, B., ‘Les Comédiens et leur public en Angleterre de 1520 à 1640’, in Jacquot, J. (ed.), Dramaturgie et société, 2 vols., Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1968, 2:.Google Scholar

Sidney, Robert, The Poems of Robert Sidney, ed. Croft, P. J., Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.Google Scholar

Smith, David L., Strier, Richard and Bevington, David (eds.), The Theatrical City: Culture, Theatre and Politics in London, 1576–1649, Cambridge University Press, 1995.Google Scholar

Smith, Nigel, Literature and Revolution in England 1640–1660, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994.Google Scholar

Tricomi, Albert H., Anti-Court Drama in England 1603–42, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989.Google Scholar

Waith, E. M., The Pattern of Tragicomedy in Beaumont and Fletcher, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1952.Google Scholar

Whigham, Frank, Seizures of the Will in Early Modern English Drama, Cambridge University Press, 1996.CrossRef Google Scholar

Wiseman, Susan, Drama and Politics in the English Civil War, Cambridge University Press, 1998.CrossRef Google Scholar

Womack, Peter, Ben Jonson, Blackwell: Oxford, 1986.Google Scholar

Works of John Webster, ed. Gunby, David Charles, Hammond, Antony and Vecchio, Doreen Del, Cambridge University Press, 1995– (in progress).Google Scholar

Wright, Louis B., ‘The Reading of Plays during the Puritan Revolution’, Huntington Library Bulletin, 6 (1934).Google Scholar

Zimmerman, Susan (ed.), Erotic Politics: Desire on the Renaissance Stage, London: Routledge, 1992.Google Scholar

Book contents

19 - Literature and the theatre to 1660

Summary

Access options

References

Save book to Kindle

Save book to Dropbox

Save book to Google Drive