It’s recently proved effective for critics and historians to conjure a thick cultural history by concentrating on one particular year (e.g. 1611; 1606…). Even the arguably patchier nature of theatre history has lent itself to studies concentrated on a specific date: think, for instance, James Shapiro’s entertaining account of the Globe, 1599. Writing a Year-in-a-Playhouse … Continue reading It Was the Summer of ’79, at the Curtain Playhouse
Stephen Gosson
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