Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-g4j75 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-13T10:28:10.252Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

14 - Literature and the theatre

from 3 - The era of Elizabeth and James VI

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
David Bevington
Edited by
David Loewenstein  and
Janel Mueller
David Loewenstein
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Janel Mueller
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
Get access

Summary

Although the Reformation is often blamed for suppressing popular drama, and did indeed become a potent oppositional force to be reckoned with in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, that opposition was by no means evident at first. In Scotland, for example, surviving evidence from the mid sixteenth century shows that theatrical activity, carried out in open-air public venues, could serve the Protestant cause. In 1571 John Knox watched a play that dramatised the current siege of Edinburgh Castle ‘according to Mr Knox doctrin’. Although the texts for this and a number of other such plays do not survive, we do have a full text and records of performance of Sir David Lindsay’s Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits, staged first in 1540 before the King and Queen at Linlithgow, then at Cupar, Fife, in 1552, and finally at the public playfield in Edinburgh in 1554 in the presence of Marie de Lorraine, Queen Regent, along with ‘ane greit part of the Nobilitie’ and ‘ane exceding greit nowmer of pepill’. Its avowedly political allegory invites John the Common-Weill to take part in a thoroughgoing redistribution of political responsibility and thereby rescue the King (Rex Humanitas) and his three Parliamentary ‘estaits’ (Spiritualitie, Temporalitie and Merchand), from those whose loyalties are ‘speciallie vnto the Court of Rome’ (line 286). The King’s tempters are variously named Sensualitie, Flatterie, Falset and Dissait, until, as often happens in such morality drama, they adopt the disguise names of Devotioun, Sapience and Discretioun.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Early Modern English Literature , pp. 428 - 456
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Axton, Marie, The Queen’s Two Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan Succession, London: Royal Historical Society, 1977.Google Scholar
Barish, Jonas, The Antitheatrical Prejudice, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.Google Scholar
Beard, Thomas, The Theater of God’s Judgments; Or, A Collection of Histories, London: A. Islip, 1597. 3rd enlarged edn, 1631.Google Scholar
Bevington, David, Action is Eloquence: Shakespeare’s Language of Gesture, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bevington, David, From ‘Mankind’ to Marlowe: Growth of Structure in the Popular Drama of Tudor England, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bevington, David, ‘Lyly’s Endymion and Midas: The Catholic Question in England’, Comparative Drama, 32 (1998).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bevington, David, ‘Popular and Courtly Traditions on the Early Tudor Stage’, in Denny, Neville (ed.), Medieval Drama, Stratford-upon-Avon Studies, 16, London: Edward Arnold, 1973.Google Scholar
Bevington, David, Tudor Drama and Politics: A Critical Approach to Topical Meaning, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bevington, David and Peter, Holbrook, The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque, Cambridge University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Brooks, Douglas A., From Playhouse to Printing House: Drama and Authorship in Early Modern England, Cambridge University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Butler, Martin, Theatre and Crisis, 1632–1642, Cambridge University Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Cook, Ann Jennalie, The Privileged Playgoers of Shakespeare’s London, 1576–1642, Princeton University Press, 1981.Google Scholar
Corbin, Peter and Douglas, Sedge (eds.), The Oldcastle Controversy: ‘Sir John Oldcastle, Part I’, and ‘The Famous Victories of Henry V’, Manchester University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Diehl, Huston, Staging Reform, Reforming the Stage: Protestantism and Popular Theater in Early Modern England, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
DiGangi, Mario, The Homoerotics of Early Modern Drama, Cambridge University Press, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dillon, Janette, Language and Stage in Medieval and Renaissance England, Cambridge University Press, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dollimore, Jonathan, Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, Brighton: Harvester Press, 1984. 2nd edn, University of Chicago Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Edwards, Richard, Works of Richard Edwards, ed. King, Ros, Manchester University Press, and New York: Palgrave, 2001.Google Scholar
Elizabethan and Stuart Plays, ed. Charles, R. Baskervill, Virgil, B. Heltzel and Arthur, H. Nethercot, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1934.Google Scholar
Fox, Alistair, Politics and Literature in the Reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII, Oxford: Blackwell, 1989.Google Scholar
Fraser, Russell A., The War Against Poetry, Princeton University Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Gosson, Stephen, Playes confuted in five actions, proving that they are not to be suffred in a christian common weale, London: for T. Gosson, [1582]. Mod. edn in Markets of Bawdrie: The Dramatic Criticism of Stephen Gosson, ed. Kinney, Arthur F., Salzburg Studies in English Literature, 4, Salzburg: Institüt für englischen Sprache und Literatur, 1974.Google Scholar
Happé, Peter ed., The Complete Plays of John Bale, 2 vols. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1985–6), 1:22–3, 152–6.Google Scholar
Harbage, Alfred, Cavalier Drama, Oxford University Press, 1936.Google Scholar
Harbage, Alfred, Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions, New York: Macmillan, 1952.Google Scholar
Heinemann, Margot, Puritanism and Theatre: Thomas Middleton and Opposition Drama under the Early Stuarts, Cambridge University Press, 1980.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Helgerson, Richard, Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England, University of Chicago Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Hodges, C. Walter, The Globe Restored: A Study of the Elizabethan Theatre, London: E. Benn, 1953. New York: W. W. Norton, 1973.Google Scholar
Hosley, Richard, ‘The Origins of the Shakespearian Playhouse’, in Shakespeare 400, ed. McManaway, James G. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964)Google Scholar
Hosley, Richard, ‘The Playhouses and the Stage’, in Muir, Kenneth and Schoenbaum, S. (eds.), A New Companion to Shakespeare Studies, Cambridge University Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Ingram, R.W. (ed.), Coventry (University of Toronto Press, 1981).Google Scholar
Ingram, William, The Business of Playing: The Beginnings of the Adult Professional Theater in Elizabethan London, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Ingram, William, ‘The “Evolution” of the Elizabethan Playing Company’, in Astington, John H. (ed.), The Development of Shakespeare’s Theater, New York: AMS, 1992.Google Scholar
Jack, R. D. S. (ed.), Medieval and Renaissance, vol. 1 of The History of Scottish Literature, gen. ed. Graig, Cairns, 4 vols., Aberdeen University Press, 1987–8.Google Scholar
Kastan, David, ‘Workshop and/as Playhouse’, Studies in Philology, 84 (1987).Google Scholar
Kastan, David Scott and Stallybrass, Peter (eds.), Staging the Renaissance: Reinterpretations of Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama, London: Routledge, 1991.Google Scholar
Kendall, Ritchie D., The Drama of Dissent: The Radical Poetics of Nonconformity, 1380–1590, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.Google Scholar
King, John N., English Reformation Literature: The Tudor Origins of the Protestant Tradition, Princeton University Press, 1982.Google Scholar
King, Pamela, ‘The York and Coventry Mystery Cycles: A Comparative Model of Civic Response to Growth and Recession’, REED Newsletter 22 (1975).Google Scholar
Kinney, Arthur, John Skelton, Priest as Poet: Seasons of Discovery, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Knappen, M. M., Tudor Puritanism, University of Chicago Press, 1939.Google Scholar
Kyd, Thomas, The Spanish Tragedy, ed. Bevington, David, New York: Manchester University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Limon, Jerzy, Dangerous Matter: English Drama and Politics 1623–24, Cambridge University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Lindsay, David, Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits, ed. Kinsley, James, London: Cassell, 1954.Google Scholar
Loengard, Janet S., ‘An Elizabethan Lawsuit: John Brayne, His Carpenter, and the Building of the Red Lion Theatre’, Shakespeare Quarterly 34 (1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lyly, John, The Complete Works of John Lyly, ed. Bond, R. Warwick, 3 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902.Google Scholar
Lyly, John, Endymion, ed. Bevington, David, Manchester University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Manley, Lawrence, Literature and Culture in Early Modern London, Cambridge University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Marlowe, Christopher, Doctor Faustus: A- and B-Texts (1604, 1616), by Christopher Marlowe and His Collaborator and Revisers, ed. Bevington, David and Rasmussen, Eric, Manchester University Press, and New York: St Martin’s, 1993.Google Scholar
McCusker, Honor, John Bale, Dramatist and Antiquary (Bryn Mawr, PA, 1942)Google Scholar
Mullaney, Steven, The Place of the Stage: License, Play and Power in Renaissance England, University of Chicago Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Munday, AnthonyThe Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, 1601, Malone Society Reprints, Oxford University Press, 1964.Google Scholar
Nelson, Alan H., Early Cambridge Theatres: College, University, and Town Stages, 1464–1720, Cambridge University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Nelson, Alan H., ‘Hall Screens and Elizabethan Playhouses: Counter-Evidence from Cambridge’, in Astington, John H. (ed.), The Development of Shakespeare’s Theater, New York: AMS Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Nicholl, Charles, The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe (University of Chicago Press, 1992).Google Scholar
Pineas, Rainer, ‘The English Morality Play as a Weapon of Religious Controversy’, Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, 2 (1962).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prynne, William, Histrio-mastix. The players scourge, London: E. A[llde, A. Mathewes, T. Cotes] and W. J[ones] for M. Sparke, 1633.Google Scholar
Ribner, Irving, The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare, rev. edn, New York: Barnes and Noble, and London: Methuen, 1965.Google Scholar
Ringler, William, ‘The First Phase of the Elizabethan Attack on the Stage, 1558–1579’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 5 (1942).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saint, German, A treatise concernynge the division betwene the spiritualitie and the temporalitie, London: [R. Redman, 1532].Google Scholar
Shakespeare, William, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. Bevington, David, 4th edn, New York: Harper, Collins, 1992.Google Scholar
Southern, Richard, ‘The Contribution of the Interludes to Elizabethan Staging’, in Hosley, Richard (ed.), Essays on Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama in Honor of Hardin Craig, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1962.Google Scholar
Southern, Richard, The Staging of Plays Before Shakespeare, London: Faber & Faber, 1973.Google Scholar
Steane, J. B., Marlowe: A Critical Study (Cambridge University Press, 1965).Google Scholar
The Macro Plays: The Castle of Perseverance, Wisdom, Mankind, A Facsimile Edition with Facing Transcriptions, ed. Bevington, David, Folger Facsimiles, Manuscript Series, 1, New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1972.Google Scholar
The Three Parnassus Plays (1598–1601), ed. Leishman, J. B., London: Nicholson & Watson, 1949.Google Scholar
The Tudor Interludes: ‘Nice Wanton’ and ‘Impatient Poverty’, ed. Tennenhouse, Leonard, New York: Garland, 1984.Google Scholar
Thompson, E. N. S., The Controversy Between the Puritans and the Stage, Yale Studies in English, 20, New York: H. Holt, 1903.Google Scholar
Tiffany, Grace ed., Reformations: Religion, Rulership, Sixteenth-Century Stage, (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1998).Google Scholar
Tom Tyler and His Wife, 2nd impression, London, 1661. Mod. edn, ed. Smith, G. C. Moore and Greg, W. W., Malone Society Reprints, 1910.Google Scholar
Wager, Lewis, A newe enterlude, never before this tyme imprinted, of the life and repentaunce of Marie Magdalene, London: J. Charleswood, 1566. Mod. edn, The Life and Repentaunce of Marie Magdalene, ed. Carpenter, Frederic Ives, University of Chicago Press, 1904.Google Scholar
Walker, Greg, Plays of Persuasion: Drama and Politics, Cambridge University Press, 1991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weimann, Robert, Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater, ed. Schwartz, Robert, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978.Google Scholar
White, Paul Whitfield, ‘Reforming Mysteries’ End: A New Look at Protestant Intervention in English Provincial Drama’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 29.1 (Winter 1999).Google Scholar
White, Paul Whitfield, Theatre and Reformation: Protestantism, Patronage, and Playing in Tudor England, Cambridge University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
White, Paul Whitfield (ed.), Marlowe, History and Sexuality: New Critical Essays on Christopher Marlowe, New York: AMS Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Wickham, Glynne, Early English Stages, 1300 to 1600, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1959–72.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×