I got to see Michael Boyd’s production of Tamburlaine last night, a show that focuses as much on the plays’ verse as it does on their violence. The production has the most extraordinary and urgent verse speaking I think I’ve ever heard: fast, fluent and often underscored by the band’s rhythmical beat. This blog post is not […]
This post also appears on The National Archives blog. BOOK FOR OUR TALK AT THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES, 1 AUGUST, HERE Tucked away somewhere in the temperature-controlled archival store rooms of The National Archives is an equity suit in the Court of Exchequer that records a series of trespass complaints. This suit seems unremarkable, if a little complex: […]
On Saturday 21st, we enjoyed seeing the puffed-up knight Huanebango being struck down by a disembodied voice, entering a sixteenth-century smoking area, meeting the cosmopolitan neighbours of 1580s Shoreditch, and learning how to use a sword and buckler… Here at Before Shakespeare we’ve already hit the bar. Here is a love jug, a fear god […]
Department of English and Creative Writing, University of Roehampton, London A three-year, full-time Ph.D. studentship is available in connection with the AHRC-funded Before Shakespeare project. The project: Before Shakespearefocuses on the earliest years of the London playhouses (broadly conceived of as c. 1565-95), and investigates the literary, economic and entertainment experimentations associated with theatre-making at this […]
[Come and behave (well?) with these tips in mind at our upcoming event on the Curtain playhouse at hackney House on 21 July.] Just as writers in twenty-first century New York have opinions on how other people should behave in theatre spaces, so early modern London has its fair share of advice to spectators. Whether […]
