Questions tagged [english-renaissance-theater]
Questions related to the theater in England between the early 1560s and 1642 (the closing of the theaters ordered by the Long Parliament). This covers theatrical works written during the reigns of Elizabeth I (Tudor), James I and Charles I (Stuart). Notable dramatists in this period include William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson and Thomas Middleton.
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Was John Lyly's play "Galatea" deliberately "queer", and how was it received at the time?
Galatea is a play by the Elizabethan playwright John Lyly which is thought to have been very influential on the era, sparking the popularity of the cross-dressing/gender reversal themes adopted by ...
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How were plays in Shakespeare's time advertised?
How were plays in Tudor or Jacobean England advertised (e.g. did they use posters, street-hawkers, etc.)? And how much information would these advertisements have contained?
Would an advertisement ...
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Are there examples of male characters dressing as women in Elizabethan/Jacobean literature?
In Tudor/Stuart literature and drama there are a lot of female characters dressing as men. And, of course, the male actors dress as female characters. But are there any plays or novels from the era ...
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Who was the first scholar who claimed that the Ur-Hamlet was influenced by the German play Der bestrafte Brudermord?
Thomas Kyd (1558—1594) is best known as the author of The Spanish Tragedy, a play that shares several similarities with Shakespeare's Hamlet. These similarities include a ghost demanding vengeance, a ...
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How is Hamlet different from a conventional Elizabethan revenge play?
It is well known that Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy established the genre of revenge tragedy in Elizabethan drama. The play contains many elements such as the appearance of a ghost, a play within ...
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Where did Edmond Malone place the Tempest in the chronology of Shakespeare's plays?
In an excellent answer to one of my previous questions, verbose writes:
Since The Tempest is the first play printed in the First Folio, it was often assumed to be an early play. Scholars such as ...
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Can three unstressed syllables constitute a substitute foot in Shakespeare?
While trying to ascertain the accentuation of certain names in Shakespeare, by analyzing lines of verse where they occur, I encountered a couple of lines that I was tempted to scan with a substitute ...
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Relevance to literature of 1623 ban on swearing in England
In 1606, the English Parliament passed the Act to Restrain Abuses of Players, and plays written after that date avoided using the names of God or Jesus "jestingly or profanely".
The Wikipedia ...
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Where was the first English playhouse outside London built?
When reading about English Renaissance theatre, discussions centre on authors, theatre companies and theatre buildings in and around London. For example, the first English playhouses were the Red Lion,...
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Why did the alexandrine become the "natural" metre for French verse drama, whereas English renaissance drama adopted the iambic pentameter?
We previously had a question asking Were all of Shakespeare's plays fully in iambic pentameter?, but of course, it wasn't just Shakespeare who used iambic pentameter; it became the prevalent metre in ...
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First English Renaissance play where women disguise as men?
In several of Shakespeare's plays, women disguise as men (for a variety of reasons). For example,
In The Merchant of Venice, Portia disguises as a lawyer; Jessica disguises as a man when eloping with ...
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How many manuscripts of English Renaissance plays have survived?
During the English renaissance, plays were primarily written for performance and play manuscripts were usually not sold to a printer before the play had had a successful run in the theatre. A number ...
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Tudor or Jacobean plays that are sequels to a Shakespeare play?
William Shakespeare wrote around 40 plays (depending on how the Shakespeare canon is defined). Except for some of his history plays (Henry IV, Henry VI) and possibly The Merry Wives of Windsor (not a ...
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