Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T11:16:19.689Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“The Actors are Come Hither”: Literary Analogues of Itinerant Player Troupe Procedures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Suzanne R. Westfall
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Hundreds of itinerant players under civic, ecclesiastical, and aristocratic patronage were criss-crossing England from at least 1426, when Henry VI rewarded a troupe of the Duke of Exeter's boys playing interludes, to the closing of the public theatres in 1642. Public and private financial accounts mark the passage of such troupes, but rarely provide any information about them beyond what year they appeared and who acted as their patron. We know that the players existed and that they travelled, but we know virtually nothing about the day-to-day lives of the touring players, about their touring strategies and methods. How many plays were in a typical repertoire, ready to be performed for any audience? How did players gain admittance to performing spaces, and how were they received? Who was responsible for the administrative details governing rewards, bed and board, and production procedures? Who decided what, where, and why the players performed, and what kind of reception could players expect? No extant primary source document addresses any of these questions.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 30 , Issue 1-2 , May 1989 , pp. 59 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1989

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

Notes

1 Wolffe, Bertram, Henry VI (London: Eyre Methuen, 1981), 37Google Scholar.

2 Lancashire, Ian, “Orders for Twelfth Day and Night circa 1515 in the Second Northumberland Household Book.” English Literary Renaissance, 10, no. 1 (Winter 1980), 7–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Westfall, Suzanne R., “The Entertainment of a Noble Patron: Early Tudor Household Revels,” Diss. University of Toronto, 1984, 255–263Google Scholar. See also Patrons and Performance: Early Tudor Household Revels (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

3 Grose, Francis, comp., “The Earl of Northumberland's Household Book.” Vol. IVGoogle Scholar of The Antiquarian Repertory (London: E. Jeffery, 1809), 253–254Google Scholar.

4 For a detailed and fascinating exploration of the player scenes in Hamlet see Kernan's, Alvin B. “Courtly Servants and Public Players: Shakespeare's Image of Theatre in the Court at Elsinore and Whitehall” in Poetic Traditions of the English Renaissance, ed. Mack, Maynard and deForest Lord, George (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 103–121CrossRefGoogle Scholar. All references to Shakespeare's plays are drawn from Harbage, Alfred, ed., William Shakespeare: The Complete Works (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969)Google Scholar.

5 Brewer, J. S., Gairdner, J., and Brodie, R. H., eds., Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII (London: HMSO, 1862–1919), II, ii, 1432, 1496Google Scholar.

6 The Book of Sir Thomas More (Oxford: Malone Society Reprints, 1911), 918–922Google Scholar.

7 See Chambers, E. K., The Medieval Stage (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923), II, 201Google Scholar; Letters and Papers… Henry VIII, Addenda, ii, 1.2, no. 1362, 1547; Murray, John T., English Dramatic Companies 1558–1642 (New York: Russell and Russell, 1963), II, 362Google Scholar; Fairfield, Leslie P., John Bale: Mythmaker for the English Reformation (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Galloway, David, ed., Dramatic Records of Norwich (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Lancashire, Ian, Two Tudor Interludes: “The Interlude of Youth,” “Hick Scomer.” (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980)Google Scholar.

8 Roper, William, The Lyfe of Sir Thomas More, Knighte, EETS, 197, (London: Oxford University Press, 1935), 198Google Scholar.

9 Southern, Richard, The Staging of Plays Before Shakespeare (London: Farber and Farber, 1973)Google Scholar; Bevington, David, Tudor Drama and Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Lancashire, Ian, “Patrons and the English Moral Play,”International Congress on Medieval Studies,Kalamazoo, Mich.,1 May 1980.Google Scholar

11 Axton, Richard, ed., Three Rastell Plays (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1979)Google Scholar.

12 SirMore, Thomas, The History of Richard III, vol. 2 of The Complete Works of Sir Thomas More, ed. Sylvester, Richard, (New Haven; Yale University Press, 1963), 80–81Google Scholar.

13 Armin, Robert, A Nest of Ninnies in The Collected Works of Robert Armin (London, 1608; rpt. New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1972), I, f. D4Google Scholar.