Theatre Closure and the Paradoxical Rise of English Renaissance Drama in the Civil Wars

Heidi Craig demonstrates how dramatic and theatrical activity paradoxically thrived during the English theatre closures, 1642–1660.

Heidi Craig (Author)

9781009224031, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 March 2023

255 pages
23.5 x 15.5 x 1.8 cm, 0.53 kg

'By focusing on the publication of drama during the closure of the theatres, Heidi Craig has given us a fascinating and original history of the English stage and its canonization as literature. With meticulous research but always written in a lively style, this book will be required reading for anyone interested in Early Modern English drama.' Zachary Lesser, University of Pennsylvania

Focusing on the production and reception of drama during the theatre closures of 1642 to 1660, Heidi Craig shows how the 'death' of contemporary theatre in fact gave birth to English Renaissance drama as a critical field. While the prohibition on playing in many respects killed the English stage, drama thrived in print, with stationers publishing unprecedented numbers of previously unprinted professional plays, vaunting playbooks' ties to the receding theatrical past. Marketed in terms of novelty and nostalgia, plays unprinted before 1642 gained new life. Stationers also anatomized the whole corpus of English drama, printing the first anthologies and comprehensive catalogues of drama. Craig captures this crucial turning-point in English theatre history with chapters on royalist nostalgia, clandestine theatrical revivals, dramatic compendia, and the mysteriously small number of Shakespeare editions issued during the period, as well as a new incisive reading of Beaumont and Fletcher's A King and No King.

1. Dead theatre, printed relics
2. Old Shakespeare
3. Canonizing Beaumont and Fletcher
4. Chronic conditions
5. Morbid symptoms.

Subject Areas: Cultural studies [JFC], British & Irish history [HBJD1], Literary studies: plays & playwrights [DSG], Literature: history & criticism [DS], Plays, playscripts [DD]