Customer Reviews

Playgoing in Shakespeare's London

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

An excellent book complete with little-known details about the state of the theatre in England during Shakespeare's time. A great source for those researching theatre and theatre history as well as reading up on Shakespeare himself. Highly recommended.

You've borrowed Mr. Peabody's time machine and come to London in circa 1600 to attend a play at the Globe. The riffraff, who paid a penny to get in, are standing around the stage for the full 3-hour performance... apprentices, sailors, rivermen, prostitutes, a cross-section of working London. But if you raise your eyes to the three tiers of boxes, what kinds of Londoners do you see? This is the question that Gurr investigates, in a way appreciative of the inherent great amusement to be found in the sources, in this extremely interesting book. And he also investigates how the audiences who attended plays at the bottom of the "social register" of playhouses, the Red Bull, differed from those who attended the other houses, up to and including the top of the mark, Blackfriars, where the King's Men played in Winter.

There is surprisingly little existing documentation that can be used to investigate, much less answer, these questions and Gurr supplies an analysis of the documentation, and then in two appendices, the documentation itself... a list of those who are known to have attended plays, and a list of quotations from sources of the time that bear on the composition and tastes of the audience. The book is scholarly, but Gurr's witty style makes it a pleasure to read as well. I particularly liked the vain playwright who could convince himself that that hissing noise was not the audience expressing disapproval of the stage business, but rather a large number of people simultaneously opening their beer bottles. [Were they drinking "Red Bull"?!?]

I never knew until I read this book, how little is really known about playgoing in Shakespeare's time. Much has to be deduced from adding a letter here, to a playbill there, to an essay from somewhere else. Gurr is an excellent writer and does a great job in this book of making such a collection of details interesting reading. He also does an absolutely outstanding job of drawing conclusions based on evidence and not filling in the blanks with guesswork. He discusses the theaters, the actors, the audiences, dress, classes, and touches on dozens of contemporary topics including the plague, pickpockets and cutpurses, the weather, and prices. There are a couple of appendices with interesting lists of surviving documentary evidence regarding playgoing.