A guest post from Hailey Bachrach's website, Dramatis Personae. I don’t like The Taming of the Shrew, and it’s one of a handful of plays I’ve been avoiding having to write about. But last week, the University of Kent’s Middling Culture Project released a fun Social Status Calculator for determining (as the name suggests) the social status of 16th … Continue reading Petruchio’s social status: guest post from Hailey Bachrach
Guest Post
Repertory and Reputation at the Curtain
Adeola Ogunbadewa is a research intern at the School of English at the University of Kent, where she is going into her final year reading for a BA in Spanish and Religious Studies. She has been working on a project to develop a timeline of play events and performances at the Curtain playhouse. The Curtain, in … Continue reading Repertory and Reputation at the Curtain
Tudor Drama in Modern Performance
How might modern performance histories and theatrical experiments advance research on Tudor plays? On Friday 1stMarch at Newcastle University, an event on ‘Tudor Plays in Performance’ will address this question. Professor Jessica Winston will speak about Tudor drama and modern traditions of "partial" performance. The event will also involve a staged reading of little-known Tudor … Continue reading Tudor Drama in Modern Performance
“Fly me to the moon!”
Edward's Boys' Director, Perry Mills, introduces their latest production, in collaboration with Before Shakespeare, John Lyly's The Woman in the Moon. To read about Edward's Boys in rehearsal at our conference in August 2017, read Perry's companion piece on our site. Now that Autumn and even Winter have been and gone – although Back-Winter appears to … Continue reading “Fly me to the moon!”
In the Company of Edward’s Boys: Nashe’s Summer’s Last Will and Testament
We are delighted to present a guest post from Perry Mills, the director of Edward's Boys (a theatre group from King Edward VI school, Stratford-upon-Avon, where he is also Deputy Head). Edward's Boys are soon to be performing The Woman in the Moon on several dates across the country. Perry has also blogged on our site … Continue reading In the Company of Edward’s Boys: Nashe’s Summer’s Last Will and Testament
Banishment as a Romance Convention in Early English Drama (c. 1581-1591)
We're very pleased to host this guest post from Alexander Thom exploring the trope of banishment in early commercial drama. *** Regarding Shakespeare, James Joyce once wrote, “the note of banishment, banishment from the heart, banishment from home, sounds uninterruptedly”.[1] Certainly, Shakespeare’s plays are littered with conspicuous instances of banishment and a number of his … Continue reading Banishment as a Romance Convention in Early English Drama (c. 1581-1591)
Audiences, Immigration and Belonging in Elizabethan Theatres: Putting the archive into performance
Who visited the Elizabethan playhouses? What did it mean to have non-English characters being played on stage? What does dramatic engagement with issues of immigration, identity, and belonging tell us about sixteenth-century theatre? Earlier this month we tackled these questions at a collaborative workshop hosted by TIDE project, Before Shakespeare and the Dolphin’s Back. This … Continue reading Audiences, Immigration and Belonging in Elizabethan Theatres: Putting the archive into performance
Audiences, Immigration, and Belonging: Strangers in Finsbury
On the 19th November 2017, the TIDE project and Before Shakespeare are hosting a workshop exploring the diverse audiences of Elizabethan playhouses and their surrounding neighbourhoods, based at the University of Liverpool’s London campus, 33 Finsbury Square. Working with The Dolphin’s Back, we will be looking at a range of plays, archival documents, diaries, and … Continue reading Audiences, Immigration, and Belonging: Strangers in Finsbury
Attribution, agencies, and investigation
We welcome a guest post from Leah Scragg, responding to this summer's discussion of attribution on the blog (see here). *** This post joins a very interesting discussion of attribution studies somewhat late in the day but I would like to put forward a couple of ideas in relation to the question of why attribution … Continue reading Attribution, agencies, and investigation
CONFERENCE RESPONSE: Reflections on the Before Shakespeare conference by Stephen Purcell
Theatre history is not so much about establishing fact as it is about embracing uncertainty, a dialogue between competing and sometimes complementary narratives. That seemed to be the guiding principle of this stimulating and exhilarating conference, and one of the central arguments of Bill Ingram’s generous and provocative opening keynote. Indeed, the conference had clearly … Continue reading CONFERENCE RESPONSE: Reflections on the Before Shakespeare conference by Stephen Purcell
Before Shakespeare 