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 … Continue reading The Curtain Rises: Post Match Report
George Peele
Losing the Plot: Audiences, Scraps of Performance, and Selective Participation
Further to Andy’s post on story, this post asks questions about the nature and necessity of coherent “story”—and of audiences following “plot”—in early modern commercial dramatic performance. It does so by putting literary and archival material into conversation with archaeological discoveries, and as such I'm thankful to Heather Knight of MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) … Continue reading Losing the Plot: Audiences, Scraps of Performance, and Selective Participation
The First Blackfriars Playhouse 1576-84: Ownership, Repertoire, Audience
On the 18th February, Before Shakespeare and The Dolphin's Back will return Elizabethan drama to the site of the First (and Second) Blackfriars Playhouse(s). We are hosting a workshop in the Apothecaries' Hall, built on what was formerly part of the Blackfriars complex that housed the two different playhouses (where we'll focus on the First … Continue reading The First Blackfriars Playhouse 1576-84: Ownership, Repertoire, Audience
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
Venus’s Palaces
She’s got it, Yeah baby, she’s got it ---Shocking Blue For 1570s and 1580s theatregoers, love was all around. One of the defining characteristics of the earliest surviving commercial plays is the predominance of the character Venus or her allegorical equivalent, Love. “Theaters and curtaines Venus pallaces,” reads a marginal note in Philip Stubbes’s The … Continue reading Venus’s Palaces
Before Shakespeare 