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Shakespeare's Theater
A Sourcebook

Tanya Pollard (Edited by)

9781405111942, Wiley

Paperback / softback, published 3 December 2003

400 pages
23.1 x 15.2 x 2.9 cm, 0.581 kg

"Tanya Pollard's anthology usefully brings together in a single volume modernized, annotated selections from many writers who participated in the lively debate about the nature and morality of the theater in late 16th and early 17th century England. [...] Shakespeare's Theater: A Sourcebook is an excellent resource for students and a fine ancillary text for university-level courses on Shakespeare or English Renaissance drama." Katharine Eisaman Maus, James Branch Cabell Professor of English, University of Virginia


"This wonderful collection of polemical documents shows early modern minds wrestling with the very concept of theatrical representation. A provocative and supremely valuable resource book." Laurie Maguire, Magdalen College, Oxford

"Pollard has performed a most valuable service to Shakespearian studies and to our knowledge of the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatrical world by collecting them together in Shakespeare's Theatre: A Sourcebook. ... recommended for all libraries colecting materials in Shakespeare, the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre, English literature, history and culture." Reference Reviews

Shakespeare's Theater: A Sourcebook brings together in one volume the most significant Elizabethan and Jacobean texts on the morality of the theater.

  • A collection of the most significant Elizabethan and Jacobean texts on the morality of the theater.
  • Includes attacks on the stage by moralists, defences by actors and playwrights, letters by magistrates, mayors and aldermen of London, and extracts from legislation.
  • Demonstrates just how heated debates about the theater became in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
  • A general introduction and short prefaces to each piece situate the writers and debates in the literary, social, political and religious history of the time.
  • Brings together in one volume texts that would otherwise be hard to locate.
  • Student-friendly - uses modern spelling and includes vocabulary glosses and annotation.

Plates viii

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction x

Select Bibliography xxvi

Timeline of Theater History and Writings xxviii

On Works Cited xxxi

1 A Treatise Against Dicing, dancing, Plays and Interludes with Other Idle Pastimes (1577) 1
John Northbrooke

2 The School of Abuse (1579) 19
Stephen Gosson

3 An Apology of the School of Abuse (1579) 34
Stephen Gosson

4 A Reply to Stephen Gosson’s School Abuse, in Defence of Poetry, Music and Stage Plays (1579) 37
Thomas Lodge

5 A Second and Third Blast of Retreat from Plays and Theaters (1580) 62
Anthony Munday

6 Plays Confuted in Five Actions (1582) 84
Stephen Gosson

7 Anatomy of Abuses (1583) 115
Philip Stubbes

8 A Mirror of Monsters (1587) 124
William Rankins

9 The Art of English Poesy (1589) 135
George Puttenham

10 An Apology for Poetry (1595) 146
Philip Sidney

11 The Theatre of God’s Judgements (1597) 166
Thomas Beard

12 The Overthrow of Stage-Plays (1599) 170
John Rainolds

13 Letter to Dr. John Rainolds (1592) 179
William Gager

14 Virtue’s Commonwealth (1603) 188
Henry Crosse

15 Preface to Volpone (1607) 198
Ben Jonson

16 The Gull’s Horn Book (1609) 206
Thomas Dekker

17 An Apology for Actors (1612) 213
Thomas Heywood

18 A Refutation of the Apology for Actors (1615) 255
I. G. [John Greene]

19 Letter to Revd. Mr. Sutton (1616) 274
Nathan Field

20 Histriomastix: The Players’s Scourge (1633) 279
William Prynne

21 Discoveries (1641) 297
Ben Jonson

22 Legal Acts and Correspondence Pertaining to the Theater 301

Index 337

Subject Areas: Literature: history & criticism [DS]
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