Book contents
- Shakespeare and Lost Plays
- Shakespeare and Lost Plays
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- A Note on Conventions for the Titles of Lost Plays
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Charting the Landscape of Loss
- Chapter 2 Early Shakespeare: 1594–1598
- Chapter 3 Shakespeare at the Turn of the Century: 1599–1603
- Chapter 4 Courting Controversy – Shakespeare and the King’s Men
- Chapter 5 Late Shakespeare: 1609–1613
- Chapter 6 Loose Canons
- Conclusion
- Index
Chapter 4 - Courting Controversy – Shakespeare and the King’s Men
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2021
- Shakespeare and Lost Plays
- Shakespeare and Lost Plays
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- A Note on Conventions for the Titles of Lost Plays
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Charting the Landscape of Loss
- Chapter 2 Early Shakespeare: 1594–1598
- Chapter 3 Shakespeare at the Turn of the Century: 1599–1603
- Chapter 4 Courting Controversy – Shakespeare and the King’s Men
- Chapter 5 Late Shakespeare: 1609–1613
- Chapter 6 Loose Canons
- Conclusion
- Index
Summary
Shortly after Shakespeare’s company became the King’s Men, it acquired ‘the tragedie of Gowrie’ – a play about an attempt to assassinate their new patron. Perhaps that decision might be understood better in the context of another lost play they performed two months later: ‘The Spanish Maze’. No scholar has hazarded a guess about that play’s specific subject matter, but the possibility I propose – though highly conjectural – is appealing in that it offers a kind of ‘missing link’ between ‘Gowrie’ and Macbeth as plays that engage with political controversy and the king’s interests. The chapter ends with the company’s acquisition of the Blackfriars playhouse, and it was a lost play, ‘The Silver Mine’, that played a key role in the circumstances that enabled the King’s Men to lease the venue. Given the paucity of evidence about how the venue affected the company’s repertory, it is prudent to avoid making assumptions about what kinds of plays have been lost from the company’s repertory. The simple truth is that we do not actually know how the King’s Men’s repertory was (or was not) affected by the company’s simultaneous use of the Blackfriars and Globe playhouses.
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- Shakespeare and Lost PlaysReimagining Drama in Early Modern England, pp. 118 - 149Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021