Romola Nuttall, James Buchanan Wallace, Felicity Brown, Lorna Wallace
{"title":"Introduction. Changing Fortunes: Reviving and Revisiting The Misfortunes of Arthur","authors":"Romola Nuttall, James Buchanan Wallace, Felicity Brown, Lorna Wallace","doi":"10.12745/et.24.2.4792","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12745/et.24.2.4792","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The dramatic mixture of Arthurian legend and Senecan tragedy inspired the revival of The Misfortunes of Arthur in 2019, a play originally written by lawyers at Gray's Inn and performed before Elizabeth I in 1588. A small but significant body of scholarship has highlighted the play's function as a vehicle for offering monarchic counsel. As the essays in this Issues in Review demonstrate, however, there are alternative ways of approaching Misfortunes through its theatricality, its dramatization of Inns ideology, its composition, and its publication. This introduction outlines why the play merits further attention.","PeriodicalId":422756,"journal":{"name":"Early Theatre: A Journal associated with the Records of Early English Drama","volume":"433 2","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133911426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Decoding Misfortunes: Advice to Elizabeth I and Her Subjects","authors":"Lorna Wallace","doi":"10.12745/et.24.2.4887","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12745/et.24.2.4887","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article positions Misfortunes within the context of drama and literature offered as counsel. Such contextualization demonstrates that the play drew upon Senecan drama, mirror for princes texts, and the Inns play Gorboduc in order to more authoritatively offer counsel about counsel itself to Elizabeth I, her court, and readers of the play in print. Considering both Misfortunes's wider circulation in print and in a recent performance by The Dolphin's Back, this article argues that the play's counsel had value beyond its application to the queen. We can fully decode the play's political messages only by looking across these different contexts.","PeriodicalId":422756,"journal":{"name":"Early Theatre: A Journal associated with the Records of Early English Drama","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129649415","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Walking with Vigilance: Middleton's Edge in The Triumphs of Truth","authors":"Mark Kaethler","doi":"10.12745/et.24.2.3863","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12745/et.24.2.3863","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Scholars have frequently regarded Thomas Middleton's mayoral shows as exemplary for their moral dramatic structure. More recently, Tracey Hill has remarked upon their critical edge. Taking Middleton's first show, The Triumphs of Truth (1613), as its primary focus and drawing upon selections from his other civic writings, this article examines the ways that Middleton's attention to the peripatetic nature of these events establishes a moral and critical reflection that is uniquely captured in the printed books he and other pageant writers saw through to publication. While arguing that this aspect of Middleton's shows represents his unique contribution to the genre, the essay also explores the influences of Munday and Dekker, whose shows precede Middleton's. Middleton does not entirely reinvent the genre but instead reminds the mayor and reader to walk with vigilance during both the live and imagined event.","PeriodicalId":422756,"journal":{"name":"Early Theatre: A Journal associated with the Records of Early English Drama","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115508861","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"'To Kill Harmless Cattle': Animal Victims and The Witch of Edmonton","authors":"M. Hand","doi":"10.12745/et.24.2.4332","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12745/et.24.2.4332","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The Witch of Edmonton (1621) is often considered as a sceptical portrayal of witchcraft that offers a sympathetic view of the accused, but its accurate depiction of animal victims in events leading to accusations remains overlooked. This essay argues that witchcraft in early modern England was largely an animal crime. Following its source text, Henry Goodcole's The Wonderfull Discoverie of Elizabeth Sawyer, A Witch (1621), and earlier prose accounts, The Witch of Edmonton illustrates the centrality of human-animal relations to the gendered dynamics and discourse of early modern witchcraft.","PeriodicalId":422756,"journal":{"name":"Early Theatre: A Journal associated with the Records of Early English Drama","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128037775","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Publishing Misfortunes: Recording Performance at the Inns of Court","authors":"Romola Nuttall","doi":"10.12745/et.24.2.5025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12745/et.24.2.5025","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay investigates the motivation behind the print publication of The Misfortunes of Arthur, privileging its functionality as a record of court performance rather than the political significance of its circulation. Examination of the playbook's distinctive and extensive paratextual apparatus reveals the authors' involvement with print publication. In considering the bibliographic presentation of the dumbshows, this essay finds overlooked parallels between Misfortunes and Stuart court masques and thus repositions the role which Misfortunes, and Inns drama more broadly, played in the developing relationship between early modern English print and performance.","PeriodicalId":422756,"journal":{"name":"Early Theatre: A Journal associated with the Records of Early English Drama","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128281548","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"'M[aster] Monkesters schollars': Richard Mulcaster, Physical Education, and the Early Modern Boy Companies","authors":"H. McCarthy","doi":"10.12745/et.24.2.4390","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12745/et.24.2.4390","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article reconsiders the pedagogical theories of leading Elizabethan teacher Richard Mulcaster in the light of early modern boy company repertories. Focusing on Mulcaster's teachings relating to the skilled, moving body, the article traces his connections to the Children of Paul's and the Children of the Blackfriars to suggest that the boy company stage became a site that explored boys' physical skills. The early modern boy company repertories, the article ultimately demonstrates, positioned their young actors as 'Mr Mulcaster's scholars'.","PeriodicalId":422756,"journal":{"name":"Early Theatre: A Journal associated with the Records of Early English Drama","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114598809","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Staging Arthur","authors":"James Buchanan Wallace","doi":"10.12745/et.24.2.4891","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12745/et.24.2.4891","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In 2019, the author of this essay directed a rehearsed, script-in-hand performance of Thomas Hughes's The Misfortunes of Arthur in Gray's Inn Chapel. This essay records the rehearsal process, staging, and design. It explains the choice of this play for revival and how text-cutting shaped the way the story was to be told. The author also discusses the play's language, including echoes of it in Shakespeare's Macbeth, and asks what staging this play tells us about the relationship between Inns of Court drama and the wider world of English professional theatre and, more generally, European theatre of the time.","PeriodicalId":422756,"journal":{"name":"Early Theatre: A Journal associated with the Records of Early English Drama","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123863114","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"'Et dat alapam vita': A Stage Direction in the Chester 'Noah's Flood'","authors":"P. Whiteford","doi":"10.12745/et.24.1.4502","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12745/et.24.1.4502","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This note considers the role of one of the stage directions in the Chester cycle. The direction 'et dat alapam vita', found only in British Library MS Harley 2124, records the blow struck by Noah's wife after her sons force her aboard the ark, and is typically discussed in the context of the misogynistic 'humour' found in other dramatic and non-dramatic texts of the period. In this note, I provide an alternative, typological reading of the stage direction.","PeriodicalId":422756,"journal":{"name":"Early Theatre: A Journal associated with the Records of Early English Drama","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125481313","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bad Blood, Black Desires: On the Fragility of Whiteness in Middleton and Rowley's The Changeling","authors":"J. Paris","doi":"10.12745/et.24.1.3803","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12745/et.24.1.3803","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay reads Thomas Middleton and William Rowley's The Changeling (ca 1622) as a meditation on the fragility of white privilege. The anxieties about blood in the play are situated by how the English viewed Spain as the least white nation within Europe. The trope of blackness impacts the way others read Beatrice-Joanna's sexual transgressions, ultimately questioning her chastity and challenging her privileges as a white woman. Rather than seeing whiteness as a stable identity category, I argue that the privileges of whiteness were particularly unstable for white women in the early modern period.","PeriodicalId":422756,"journal":{"name":"Early Theatre: A Journal associated with the Records of Early English Drama","volume":"335 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130466109","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Katherine of Aragon's Deathbed: Why Chapuys Brought a Fool","authors":"Nadia T. van Pelt","doi":"10.12745/et.24.1.4357","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12745/et.24.1.4357","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay examines the presence of a fool in the retinue of Imperial Ambassador Eustace Chapuys at Katherine of Aragon's deathbed. Did this fool primarily bring comic relief or was he, as Henry VIII's servants suspected, an intelligencer or spy? Seeking to revisit current understandings of what court fools were expected to be able to do or facilitate, I observe that Chapuys used his fool to underline his own role as a representative of the emperor, and to signal that despite the king's beliefs that he was now divorced, Katherine's legal status had not changed in the eyes of Catholic Europe.","PeriodicalId":422756,"journal":{"name":"Early Theatre: A Journal associated with the Records of Early English Drama","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116810774","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}