Keith Sturgess - Böcker

Elizabethan domestic tragedies depicted the workings of Fortune in the lives of ordinary people, telling stories of sin, discovery, punishment and divine mercy, with their settings and characterization often enhanced by a highly entertaining blend of realism and sensationalism. Only some half-dozen survive to offset the dramas of kings and nobles in the tragedies of Shakespeare and his peers. They combined journalism and entertainment with a didactic concern, and their plots were often derived from contemporary events. Arden of Faversham (1592) and A Yorkshire Tragedy (1608) are both based on chronicles or pamphlets describing authentic murders, while A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603) by Thomas Heywood is a fictional creation, considered his masterpiece.

In this scholarly and entertaining book, first published in 1987, the author tells the story of Jacobean private theatre. Most of the best plays written after 1610, including Shakespeare’s late plays such as The Tempest, were written for the new breed of private playhouses – small, roofed and designed for an aristocratic, literary audience, as opposed to the larger, open-air houses such as the Globe and the Red Bull, catering for a popular, ‘lowbrow’ audience. The author discusses the polarisation of taste and the effect it had on literary criticism and theatre history. This title will be of interest to students of English Literature, Drama and Performance.