The History Of European Theatre

One of the generally accepted facts about theatre in the time of Shakespeare and Jonson is that boy actors took female roles and women were banned from appearing on the stage.  This is in fact only partly true and my guest for today’s episode has made a study of how early modern actresses, from traditions on the European continent,  influenced the English stage.  During out conversation we covered aspects of European theatre from the early 1500’s, and Commedia Dell’arte in particular.  You will find my take on this in season three of the podcast and if you have already listened to that hopefully some of the names will still sound familiar.  We also talked about the influence of actresses on playwrights and plays from the period and hopefully you will remember Lilly, Marlowe and Kyd and The Spanish Tragedy from season four of the podcast.  All those episodes are still out there on your podcast feed if you need a refresher.   

Pamela Allen Brown is Professor Emerita of English, University of Connecticut. Her monograph The Diva’s Gift to the Shakespearean Stage: Agency, Theatricality, and the Innamorata was published by Oxford in 2021. With Julie Campbell and Eric Nicholson, she edited and translated Isabella Andreini's Lovers' Debates for the Stage, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe (Iter, 2022). Previous books include Better a Shrew than a Sheep: Women, Drama and the Culture of Jest in Early Modern England; As You Like It: Texts and Contexts (co-authored with Jean E. Howard); and Women Players in England 1500-1650: Beyond the All-Male Stage (co-edited with Peter Parolin). She is a founding member of Theater Without Borders, a working group of scholars of early modern transnational drama, and she recently joined the New Books Network as a podcast host. Her poetry has appeared in Epiphany, First Literary Review East, New Square, Visual Verse, Public, Out of Sequence, and P/rose. For more on her work see:

https://www.pamelaallenbrown.com/

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Episode 146:

The banning of printed satire.

‘Every Man Out of His Humour’ is produced by The Lord Chamberlin’s Men.

‘Cynthia’s Revels’ is performed at court but is not well received.

‘Poetester’ is performed at the Blackfriars and sparks ‘the war of the poets’ with Dekker and Marston.

‘Sejanus: His Fall’ fails to impress.

Jonson cultivates friendships with nobility close to the Stuart dynasty.

The death of Elizabeth.

Entertainments for the arrival of Queen Anne in England.

Jonson’s contribution to the official entry of King James into London.

Jonson is ejected from court on Twelfth Night 1604.

The Court Masque.

‘The Masque of Blackness’.

‘Eastward Ho’ causes Jonson another spell in prison.

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Episode 145:

Continuing the story of Ben Jonson’s life from the point where just as he starts to make his mark in the theatre scene everything goes very badly wrong for him.

‘The Isle of Dogs’ at the Swan Theatre

The closure of the London Theatres

Jonson in prison

How the London theatres reopened

The Swan and Pembroke’s Men

Speculation on the content of ‘The Isle of Dogs’

Jonson’s other early work for the theatre

Jonson and the Lord Chamberlin’s Men

Jonson’s duel with Gabriel Spencer

Jonson in prison again

The conversion to Catholicism

Jonson’s trial and taking ‘the benefit of the clergy’

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Episode 144: 

On several occasions through the story of the renaissance theatre I have touched on how the players made use of cue sheets rather than full scripts as they rehearsed and performed plays, so I was fascinated to see that there is a company of actors working today who produce plays by Shakespeare and other renaissance playwrights using cue sheets.  Although we don’t have documentary evidence about exactly how they were used at the time and therefore how the rehearsal process worked, what better way to get an understanding of how they might have been used and what impact they had on productions than to produce plays using them and work through the practical issues and artistic choices that become involved.  

Shake-Scene Shakespeare have produced work for live and on-line presentation since 2017 and continue to do so today, so I was very pleased when Lizzie Conrad-Hughes, founder, company Director and book holder for the company agreed to come and talk about the experience of producing cue-based theatre for a modern audience.

https://www.shake-sceneshakespeare.co.uk/

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Episode 143:

The second part of the life of Ben Jonson takes him from his birth, through his years at school and onto working as a bricklayer.  He then briefly joined the army before returning to become a player, a poet and a playwright.

Jonson’s Scottish ancestry.

His father’s loss of position under queen Mary.

His Stepfather Robert Brett, bricklayer.

Life for the Brett/Jonson family on Christopher Lane

Jonson’s education at Westminster school.

Theatre at the Westminster School.

The influence of school master William Camden.

Jonson the bricklayer’s apprentice.

Jonson briefly attends Cambridge university – maybe.

Jonson the soldier and his service in the war in the Netherlands.

The Lord Mayor’s procession and the involvement of the Guild companies

Jonson’s contribution to the Lord Mayor’s procession.

Jonson the player for Pembroke’s men.

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Episode 142

Dr Natália Pikli discusses the changing view of the 'The Shrew' in Medieval and Early Modern European culture and how women are represented in Shakespeare's early comedies,

She then goes on to outline how Shakespeare became part of national Hungarian culture and how the plays have been treated in translation.

Dr Natália Pikli is Associate Professor at the Department of English Studies, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. She teaches medieval and early modern culture and literature and is Head of the relevant PhD Program. She also teaches contemporary popular culture, as well as theatre history and theatre reviewing for students majoring in Theatre Studies. She has published extensively on Shakespeare, early modern popular culture, theatre, iconography, and on the reception of Shakespeare in our days, with a focus on contemporary theatre. Her book chapters and articles appeared in, for instance,  Shakespearean Criticism (Thomson-Gale, 2004), Shakespeare's Others in 21st-century European Performance (Bloomsbury, 2021), and in academic journals: European Journal of English Studies, Journal of Early Modern Studies (Florence) Shakespeare Survey (Cambridge), Theatralia (Brno). She (co-)edited five books and is the author of two monographs, The Prism of Laughter: Shakespeare’s ’very tragical mirth’ (VDM Verlag, 2009) and Shakespeare’s Hobby-Horse and Early Modern Popular Culture (Routledge, 2022). In her free time, she directs amateur student performances and writes theatre reviews.

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Episode 141:

In this episode I set us up for a look at the life of Ben Johnson discussing some of the sources for information about his life and how far we can trust them – it’s complicated.

Jonson’s 1618 visit to Scotland and why he might have undertaken the journey on foot. 

His conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden.

Jonson’s opinions on other writers as reported by Drummond and thoughts on their validity.

Descriptions of Jonson by Aubery and Dekker.

The Johnson portrait.

How Johnson might have revealed himself in his work.

How his poems appear to be self-referencing but may not be as straightforward as they seem.

How his plays possibly include some self-revealing aspects.

Admiration of Johnson as equal to, or greater than, Shakespeare.

The modern reader and the problems with Jonson. 

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In October 2023 the story of the discovery of a stage floor that dated from before the Elizabethan period in St George’s Guildhall in Kings Lynn hit the news.  The attrition to the headline writers was the fact that that very stage had probably supported Shakespeare as he acted as part of a playing troupe on stage.  Of course, that is a great hook for the story as the interest in Shakespeare goes well beyond those of us immersed in the history of theatre and the idea that we can still share a space like that across four hundred years is a beguiling one.  I remember standing on the original floor of Anne Hathaway’s cottage in Stratford Upon Avon and feeling a very similar thrill, but there is much more to the story of St George’s Guild Hall at King’s Lynn, a venue for theatre for not just four hundred years, but at least six hundred, making it the UK’s oldest working theatre.  So, I was very pleased when Tim Fitzhigham, Creative Director of the Guildhall Theatre agreed to come onto the podcast and talk about St George’s Guildhall and that stage.

Tim Fitzhigham is the Borough Council of Kings Lynn and West Norfolk Creative Director appointed to oversee the revival of St George’s Guildhall.  As well as leading this extensive project he is currently completing his PhD on Robert Armin, an actor in The King’s Men who originated many of the clown and fool roles in all but the earliest Shakespeare plays and was a well-known playwright and author in his own right.

Links to the St George's Guildhall Website

https://stgeorgesguildhall.com

and Instagram Account

https://www.instagram.com/stg.guildhall/ 

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Episode 139:

Last time ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona’ gave us a look at second comedy from Shakespeare’s early phase as a playwright.  As you heard certain elements in the plotting of the play and execution of its denouement make it problematic, but nevertheless it showed early promise.  The lyrical nature of much of the language used in that play is quite typical of the earliest comedies and it is probably not coincidental that this was around the time that Shakespeare was writing his long lyrical poem ‘Venus and Adonis’, so we might assume that his mindset at the time was that of a lyrical poet, and maybe we see that influence still in his probable next work, the much more accomplished play ‘The Comedy of Errors’, which has remained one of the more popular Shakespeare comedies since its first performance.  

The Source for the play and changes Shakespeare made to it

The original text of the play

The dating and earliest performances of the play

Foul Papers

The setting as a Roman street with three houses

A Synopsis of the play

The serious and long opening exposition.

The importance of a dramatic opening scene

Social commentary in the play

Adriana as a well-developed character for a light-hearted farce

Antipholus of Ephesus as an unpleasant character, but toned down from the source material

Antipholus of Syracuse as a more sympathetic character

The punishment of the Dromio twins

The view of authority in the play

The problems with the plot (if we take it too seriously)

The soliloquies of Antipholus of Syracuse

Luciana and the expression of the value of tradition

What should we read into the very ending of the play?

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Episode 138:

Over the course of speaking about English Renaissance Plays and Shakespeare I have had cause to mention the play ‘A Knack to Know a Knave’ several times.  Most latterly because it is thought to include references to ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ and ‘Titus Andronicus’ and prior to that, in the season on the Early Renaissance Theatre it had a mention as one of the plays performed at the Rose Playhouse as recorded in Henslowe’s Diary.  Having been reminded of it while writing about the early Shakespeare plays I thought that it deserved a little time in the spotlight on it’s own as it gives us a little snapshot of the plays, and particularly comedies other than Shakespeare and Jonson, that was circulating at the time of the earliest of Shakespeare’s plays.  So, here is a little interlude of an episode all about ‘A Knack to Know a Knave’.

A quick word on ‘Shakespeare’s Borrowed Feathers’ by Darren Feebury-Jones, which is published in October 2024 and on Henry Porter and his possible involvement with ‘Dr Faustus’.

The performances of ‘A Knack to Know a Knave’ as reported in Henslowe’s Diary

The mystery of the low takings for repeated performances in a second run of the play

The printed quarto edition of the play

A summary of the plot

The (possibly) missing parts of the play, including Kempe’s extemporising

How the fools of Gotham folk tale is worked into the play

The allusions to other plays in the text

The final lines of the play

If you would like to read the text of A Knack to Know a Knave, you can find it on google books here

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