Early Modern Performance Beyond the Public Stage

Amrita Sen is Associate Professor of English at the University of Calcutta, India. She is co-editor of Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (2020), and a special issue of the Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies on “Alternative Histories of the East India Company” (2017). Jennifer Linhart Wood is Assistant Professor of English at George Mason University, USA. She is the author of Sounding Otherness in Early Modern Drama and Travel: Uncanny Vibrations in the English Archive (2019), winner of the 2021 MRDS David Bevington Award for Best New Book.

Sen and Wood want their contributors to remind us of other kinds of performance forms and spaces, taking us away from, say, the Globe to amateur theatricals in Kent, from the Rose to morris dancing in and around Oxford, from the Blackfriars to firework displays on the Thames. The breadth of work their contributors examine is as wide as one could wish.

• Introduction: ‘All the World’s a Stage’: Reconceptualizing Renaissance PerformanceJennifer Linhart Wood, George Mason University, USA, and Amrita Sen, University of Calcutta, IndiaSection I: Documents of PerformanceChapter 1: Stage Directions in the Medieval English Theatre: Functions, Conventions, and TransitionsPhilip Butterworth, University of Leeds, UKChapter 2: ‘Take some part in this booke and act it’: Amateur Actor’s Parts and Professional DramaDaniel Yabut, École Nationale Superieur d’Art Dramatique (ENSAD) and Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, FranceChapter 3: Marks of Amateur Performance: Edward Dering’s Manuscript of King Henry the Fourth and Other Traces of Performance-Minded ReadersMeaghan Brown, National Endowment for the Humanities, USAChapter 4: Oxford and the Morris Dance: University and Communal PerformancesNatália Pikli, Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary Section II: Devotional PerformancesChapter 5: Recreation, Pleasure and Performance in the Medieval ConventOlivia Robinson, University of Birmingham, UKChapter 6: Closet Catholicism, Private Entertainments, and Shakespeare in Seventeenth-Century YorkshireChelsea McKelvey, Clemson University, USA Chapter 7: Performing Religious Reform in the Mid-Tudor Parish ChurchAnne Heminger, University of Tampa, USASection III: Musical PerformancesChapter 8: Local Community and Performativity: The Tutbury Minstrel CourtCsilla Virág, Eötvös Loránd University, HungaryChapter 9: Contextualising Shakespeare’s As You Like It Within Court Performance Murat Ögütcü, Adiyaman University, TürkiyeChapter 10: Memory, Music, and the Politics of Forgotten Entertainments in Early Modern LondonSarah F. Williams, University of South Carolina, USASection III: Political EntertainmentsChapter 11: The King’s Players and London’s Civic Drama: Richard Burbage and London’s Love to the Royal Prince Henry (1610)Siobhan Keenan, De Montfort University, UKChapter 12: From Britain to Fairyland: Prince Henry’s Investiture and the Fictionalizing Power of the Stuart Court MasquesGabriel Lonsberry, Jacksonville State University, USAChapter 13: Revising Patriarchal Gender Politics in the Masques of Charles I and Henrietta MariaEffie Botonaki, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, GreeceChapter 14: Performative Encounters in Seventeenth-Century British North AmericaAlden T. Vaughan, Columbia University, USA, and Virginia Mason Vaughan, Clark University, USASection IV: Materialities of PerformanceChapter 15: ‘Under Pretence of Rope Dancing’: Headlining Performances at the Interregnum Red BullEmma Rose Kraus, University of Kent, UKChapter 16: Monsters and Machines: Puppets as Performers, Props, and Stages in English Political PageantryNicole Sheriko, Yale University, USAChapter 17: Performing Play: Chess, Performance, and Spectacle in Early Modern England Souvik Mukherjee, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta, IndiaSection V: Spectacular Performances Chapter 18: Performing Primates: Simantics, Racialization, and Extra-theatrical ArchivesTeresa Simone, University of Mississippi, USAChapter 19: Fireworks and Pyrotechnic PerformanceMaria Shmygol, British Shakespeare Association, UKChapter 20: Early Modern Performative FailuresAbbie Weinberg, Independent Scholar, USA