Abstract
The claims of 1630s drama on critical attention have shifted in recent years. Earlier generations of critics either deplored its decadent decline from the high point of Shakespearean drama or admired its representation of a dynamic prerevolutionary moment in which the theater was able to act as the voice and imaginative staging ground of the political turmoil leading to the English Civil War. The editors of this volume have rightly recommended that the theater of the 1630s should be seen as more than a “prelude to an interruption.” However removing the shadow of the Civil War from our scrutiny of 1630s theater only brings into brighter focus the vexed critical relationship between politics and drama in the period.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Samuel Johnson, “Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth,” in Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare, ed. H. R. Woudhuysen ( New York: Penguin, 1989 ), 43.
See Christina Lamer, “James I and Witchcraft,” in The Reign of James VI and I, ed. Alan G. R. Smith ( London: Macmillan, 1973 ), 74–90
Leeds Barroll, “Shakespeare without King James,” in Politics, Plague, and Shakespeare’s Theater ( Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991 ), 23–69.
Frederic Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act ( 1981; reprint, London and New York: Routledge, 1989 ), 76–77.
See N. W. Bawcutt, The Control and Censorship of Caroline Drama: The Records of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels 1623–73 ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996 ), 189.
See Herbert Berry, “The Globe Bewitched and El Hombre Fiel,” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 1 (1984): 211–30.
See Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearian Playing Companies ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996 ), 146–47.
Arthur Melville Clark, Thomas Heywood: Playwright and Miscellanist ( Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1931 ), 209.
See Margot Heinemann, “Middleton’s Game at Chess: Parliamentary Puritans and Opposition Drama,” English Literary Renaissance 5 (1975): 232–50.
For a full discussion of the role of different paradigm spectators, see A. R. Braunmuller, “ ‘To the Globe I rowed’: John Holies sees A Game at Chess,” English Literary Renaissance 20 (1990): 340–56.
Alison Findlay, “Sexual and Spiritual Politics in the Events of 1633–34 and The Late Lancashire Witches,” in The Lancashire Witches: Histories and Stories ed. Robert Poole (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2002), 159, 161.
See Jonas Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice ( Berkley: University of California Press, 1981 ), 80–132.
Michael Neill, “ ‘Wits most accomplished Senate’: The Audience of the Caroline Private Theaters,” Studies in English Literature 18 (1978): 352.
James Shirley, “A Prologue at the Globe to his Comedy call’d The doubt-full Heire,” in Narcissvs, or, The Self-Lover (London, 1646), 154.
See Zachary Lesser, “Walter Burre’s Knight of the Burning Pestle,” English Literary Renaissance 29 (1999): 22–43.
Thomas Goffe, The Careless Shepherdess (London, 1656), 1–8.
See also Gerald Eades Bentley, ed., The Seventeenth-Century Stage ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968 ), 28–37.
Shackerley Marmion, “Unto his worthy friend Mr Ioseph Taylor,” in John Fletcher, The Faithfull Shepherdesse (London, 1634), sig. A3r.
Thomas Heywood, “The Prologue to the Stage at the Cockpit,” in Christopher Marlowe, The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta (London, 1633), sig. A4v.
Theophilus Bird, “Prologve,” in John Ford, The Ladies Triall (London, 1639), sig. A4v.
Thomas Heywood, A Challenge for Beauty (London, 1636), sig. A3r.
Richard Dutton, “ ‘Discourse in the players, though no disobedience’: Sir Henry Herbert’s Problems with the Players and Archbishop Laud, 1632–34,” Ben Jonson Journals (1998): 37–62, 51.
Laird H. Barber, ed., An Edition of The Late Lancashire Witches by Thomas Heywood and Richard Brome ( New York and London: Garland, 1979 ).
Ben Jonson, A Tale of a Tub in The Workes of Benjamin Jonson 3 vols. (London, 1640–1641), 3:68.
See Kathleen McLuskie, “Collaboration,” in The Revels History of Drama in England, Volume IV, 1613–1660, ed. Philip Edwards, Gerald Eades Bentley, Kathleen McLuskie, and Lois Potter ( London and New York: Methuen, 1981 ), 169–82.
Gerald Eades Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage,7 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941–1968), 3:73–74.
For the construction of witchcraft as narrative, see Marion Gibson, Early Modern Witches: Witchcraft Cases in Contemporary Writing ( London and New York: Routledge, 2000 ).
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2006 Adam Zucker and Alan B. Farmer
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
McLuskie, K.E. (2006). Politics and Aesthetic Pleasure in 1630s Theater. In: Zucker, A., Farmer, A.B. (eds) Localizing Caroline Drama. Early Modern Cultural Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230601611_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230601611_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-53405-0
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-60161-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)