Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 7 - ‘Art Hath an Enemie Cal’d Ignorance’: The Prodigal Industry of Early Modern Playwrighting

  • from Part II - Playgoers
  • Edited by Simon Smith, Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, Emma Whipday
  • Book:
    Playing and Playgoing in Early Modern England
    Published online:
    10 March 2022
    Print publication:
    17 March 2022, pp 142-160

  • Summary

    In this essay I argue that early modern plays regularly failed in the theatre, indeed that early modern plays were built to fail. In making this argument I push back against the familiar idea that the early modern theatre was an “industry”: an essentially efficient commercial undertaking, governed by a set of conventionalized, rationalized practices, in which the product was carefully calibrated to the tastes of the consumer. Against the “industrial” view of early modern drama I attempt to oppose an “artistic” view, in which dramatists’ concern with audience response is primarily rhetorical—a displaced way of articulating a commitment to formal complexity and an indifference to the limitations that the commercial context might seem to make inevitable. The argument encompasses a wide range of examples, including plays by Jonson, Dekker, Webster, and Fletcher; it concludes with a discussion of one of Shakespeare’s greatest failures, the final scene of Winter’s Tale.