Yamada Experiencing Drama in the English Renaissance

Readers and Audiences
Erscheinungsjahr 2017
ISBN: 978-1-351-76446-9
Verlag: Taylor & Francis
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 296 Seiten

Reihe: Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture

Experiencing Drama in the English Renaissance: Readers and Audiences attempts, on the basis of various archives, to estimate the size of London’s population, the size of audiences and the frequency of people’s theatre-going, demonstrating the flourishing theatre business in London, all in numerical terms. It also observes a correlation between literacy and the flourishing of drama, follows the trail of the competition between the rise of drama and prose literature, illustrates the birth of a class of playbook readers, and points out the stationers’ contribution to the standardisation of the form of dramatic texts, suggesting that Shakespeare started his career only several years after the standardisation. Using quantitative and qualitative data, Akihiro Yamada carefully studies the intersection of drama and book-publishing, not only to show the breadth of the audience, but also the of the interaction of readers, playwrights, stationers with that audience in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Among the authors studied are Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and William Shakespeare.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Yamada, Akihiro

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Theaterwissenschaft Theatergeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Strömungen & Epochen
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Sprachwissenschaften

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface

Tables, Figures and Acknowledgments

Works Cited and Abbreviations

Introduction to Shakespeare and the Population of London

PART ONE: Authors/Playwrights, Readers and Theatre-goers: Their Mutual Interactions

Chapter 1: The Formation of a Class of Readers

Chapter 2: The Improvement of Literacy and its Reflection in Drama

Chapter 3: The Rise of Drama and the Birth of a Class of Readers of Drama

PART TWO: Playwrights, Playbook Readers and Printers/Publishers: Their Increasing Cooperation for the Unification of Forms of Dramatic Texts

Chapter 4: Changes in Form of Dramatic Texts: A Standardization

PART THREE: Playbook Readers and their Responses to the Text

Chapter 5: Readers of Drama—their Annotations (1): Play-Quartos of Chapman, Ford and Marston

Chapter 6: Readers of Drama—their Annotations (2): Play-Quartos and the First Folio of Shakespeare

Conclusion: The Zeal of Audiences and the Passion of Readers

Appendixes

A1: The Estimated Population of London: A Comparison between Yamada and Sutherland

A2: The Distribution Ratio of Minors’ Age-structure of the British Population in the Sixteenth and

Seventeenth Centuries

A3: Principles for Table 8 concerning Plays which contain Scenes of, or References to, Reading and/or

Writing—a Memorandum

A4: Shakespeare’s Plays: Their Dates and Proposers of Dates, &c.

A5: Play-Quartos Published in the 1590s

A6: A List of Play-Quartos Examined

A List of Plays and Other Works mentioned with the Authors’ Names

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Dr. Akihiro Yamada is a retired Professor of English Literature at Meisei University, Tokyo and is the author for more than a dozen books on Shakespeare and English Literature.