Shakespeare's Theater A Sourcebook

by Pollard, Tanya

• ISBN13: 9781405111935
• ISBN10: 1405111933
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-01-30
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Tanya Pollard is Assistant Professor of English at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

Table of Contents

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	(18)
John Northbrooke
2 The School of Abuse (1579)	19	(15)
Stephen Gosson
3 An Apology of the School of Abuse (1579)	34	(3)
Stephen Gosson
4 A Reply to Stephen Gosson's School of Abuse, in Defence of Poetry, Music, and Stage Plays (1579)	37	(25)
Thomas Lodge
5 A Second and Third Blast of Retreat from Plays and Theaters (1580)	62	(22)
Anthony Munday
6 Plays Confuted in Five Actions (1582)	84	(31)
Stephen Gosson
7 Anatomy of Abuses (1583)	115	(9)
Philip Stubbes
8 A Mirror of Monsters (1587)	124	(11)
William Rankins
9 The Art of English Poesy (1589)	135	(11)
George Puttenham
10 An Apology for Poetry (1595)	146	(20)
Philip Sidney
11 The Theatre of God's Judgments (1597)	166	(4)
Thomas Beard
12 The Overthrow of Stage-Plays (1599)	170	(9)
John Rainolds
13 Letter to Dr. John Rainolds (1592)	179	(9)
William Gager
14 Virtue's Commonwealth (1603)	188	(10)
Henry Crosse
15 Preface to Volpone (1607)	198	(8)
Ben Jonson
16 The Gull's Horn Book (1609)	206	(7)
Thomas Dekker
17 An Apology for Actors (1612)	213	(42)
Thomas Heywood
18 A Refutation of the Apology for Actors (1615)	255	(19)
I.G. [John Greene]
19 Letter to Revd. Mr. Sutton (1616)	274	(5)
Nathan Field
20 Histriomastix: The Player's Scourge (1633)	279	(18)
William Prynne
21 Discoveries (1641)	297	(4)
Ben Jonson
22 Legal Acts and Correspondence Pertaining to the Theater	301	(36)
Index	337