Roaring Boys: Playwrights And Players In Han Elizabethan And Jacobean England

by Cook, Judith; Doran, Gregory

• ISBN13: 9780750933681
• ISBN10: 0750933682
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-01-30
• Publisher: Sutton Pub Ltd

Summary

In the late 1580s a new kind of entertainment flowered in London: professional theatre, with its custom built playhouses, professional companies, incredible staging and, last but not least, the new writers, poets, playwrights - the roaring boys. This lively and engaging book, packed with anecdote, recreates the lives and times of these playwrights and actors, and the world in which they lived from 1578 when Burbage built the first purpose built theatre to 1620 when the great age came to its end.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	iv
Foreword by Gregory Doran	v
Acknowledgements	vii
Prologue	ix
Introduction: Dangerous Times -- the New World of Theatre	1	(8)
The New Professionals	9	(12)
The University Wits	21	(13)
A Theatre for the People	34	(14)
Men About Town	48	(12)
Performances, Plays and Politics	60	(17)
The Reckoning	77	(16)
Deaths and Entrances	93	(13)
A Visit to the Playhouse	106	(14)
Curtain Fall on the Elizabethans	120	(13)
Jacobean Players and Patrons	133	(10)
Roaring Girls	143	(17)
Shakespeare and the King's Men	160	(14)
An Insult to Spain	174	(13)
Exit Ben Jonson	187	(9)
Notes	196	(4)
Bibliography	200	(3)
Index	203