Dekker and Heywood: Professional Dramatists

208 Pages·1994·19.492 MB·English

by  Kathleen E. McLuskie (auth.)

ENGLISH DRAMATISTS
Series Editor:
Bruce King
ENGLISH DRAMATISTS
Series Editor: Bruce King
Published titles
Susan Bassnett, ShIlkespeare: The Elizabethan Plays
Richard Allen Cave, Ben Janson
Philip McGuire, ShIlkespetzre: The Jacobean Plays
Kathleen E. McLuskie, Dekker and Heywood
Christine Richardson and Jackie Johnston, Medieval Drama
Roger Sales, Christopher MIlrlowe
David Thomas, WiUiJzm Congreve
Martin White, Middletan and lburneur
Katharine Worth, Sheridan and Goldsmith
Forthcoming titles
John Bull, Vanbrugh and Farquhllr
Barbara Kachur, Etherege and Wycherley
Maximillian Novak. Fielding and Gay
Rowland Wymet Webster and Ford
ENGLISH DRAMATISTS
DEKKER AND
HEYWOOD
PROFESSIONAL DRAMATISTS
Kathleen E. McLuskie
~ VICe Chancellor, University of Kent
M
St. Martin's Press
© Kathleen E. McLuskie 1994
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this
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First published in Great Britain 1994 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-333-46237-9 ISBN 978-1-349-23223-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-23223-9
First published in the United States of America 1994 by
Scholarly and Reference Division,
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 978-0-312-10629-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McLuskie, Kathleen.
Dekker and Heywood / by Kathleen E. McLuskie.
p. cm. - (English dramatists)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ).
ISBN 978-0-312-10629-4
1. Dekker, Thomas, ca.1572, ... 1632-Criticism and interpretation.
2. Heywood, Thomas, d.1641-Criticism and interpretation.
3. English drama-17th century-History and criticism. 4. London
(England)-Popular culture-17th century. 5. Theater-England
-London-History-17th century. I. Title. II. Series: English
dramatists (St. Martin's Press)
PR2494.M35 1994
822' .3-dc20 93-30472
CIP
Contents
Editor's Preface vi
Acknowledgements vii
1 Fireworks All Over the House 1
2 Politics and Performance 25
3 Prentices, Citizens and the London Audience 54
4 Women and Dramatic Form 82
5 The Challenge to the Popular Stage 106
6 The Cross-dressed Heroine 128
7 The Final Years 155
8 Conclusions 179
Notes 182
Bibliography 193
Index 198
v
Editor's Preface
Each generation needs to be introduced to the culture and great
works of the past and to reinterpret them in its own ways. This
series re-examines the important English dramatists of earlier
centuries in the light of new information, new interests and new
attitudes. The books are written for students, theatre-goers and
general readers who want an up-to-date view of the plays and
dramatists, with emphasis on drama as theatre and on stage,
social and political history. Attention is given to what is known
about performance, acting styles, changing interpretations, the
stages and theatres of the time and theatre economics. The books
will be relevant to those interested in or studying literature,
theatre and cultural history.
BRUCE KING
vi
Acknowledgements
My thanks to all my friends and colleagues who made this book
possible. Richard Proudfoot kindly let me see the typescript of
his Malone Society edition of Tom 0' Lincoln, the 'Women, Text
and History' seminar at Oxford made helpful comments on the
section on women. The librarians at the University of Kent
searched for material, sent for inter-library loans and were
tolerant of my tardiness in returning books on Dekker and
Heywood. Jean Howard and Phyllis Rackin listened to the
arguments with their accustomed learned enthusiasm. Andrew
Butcher, Rod Edmond, Tom Healy, Marion O'Conno~ Jonathan
Sawday and Sue Wiseman helped in a variety of ways. As
always, the greatest debt for tolerance and time is to David
Thrley and Anna, Hilary and Celia.
vii
1
Fireworks AllOver the House
I
In the preface to the reader, affixed to the 1613 edition of The
White Devil, John Webster praised Chapman, Jonson, Beaumont
and Fletcher and 'lastly (without wrong last to be named) the
right happy and copious industry of Master Shakespeare, Master
Dekker and Master Heywood'.l In linking the names of
Shakespeare, Dekker and Heywood, Webster was referring to
playwrights associated with the three most important companies
then working in London: the King's Men at the Globe and
Blackfriars, Prince Henry's Men at the Fortune theatre, and
Queen Anne's Men at the Red Bull, the theatre in which
Webster's play was first performed. Dekker's and Heywood's
critical fortunes have not equalled those of their illustrious
fellow2 but, like him, they were professionals, and it is as
professionals that their work offers a useful vantage point from
which to understand the conditions of theatre as it became firmly
established in the artistic and commercial world of London at the
turn of the seventeenth century.
The concept of the professional writer was both new and
highly contested.3 Howeve~ it usefully describes the activity of
those dramatists who were employed on a regular basis by major
1
2 Dekker and Heywood
companies. They worked on their craft, drawing on available
raw material in collections of narratives and other plays, and
were able to tum their hands, as occasion required, to drama
tising a contemporary scandal or adding a few scenes to the
revival of an old play.4
Dekker and Heywood wrote for the whole range of London
theatres from the down-market amphitheatre, the Red Bull in the
north of the city, to the club-like intimacy of the theatre within St
Paul's Cathedral. Their plays were also seen at court and
the dedications to the printed versions suggest at least some
measure of gentry and aristocratic patronage.5 However, their
principle and primary relationship to their art was one dom
inated by the marketplace. As well as histOries, comedies and
tragedies, Dekker and Heywood produced professional theatre
versions of court masques, topical plays responding rapidly to
current affairs and verses which provide the sCripts for the
elaborate shows with which the City's guilds welcomed the Lord
Mayor into London. They engaged, in other words, with all the
opportunities available for professional dramatists in the new,
commercial theatre world of early modern London. As such,
their work can provide an insight into the cultural movement in
which literary arts began to be transformed into the commodities
of a consumer economy which at the same time enacted and
articulated the beliefs and aspirations of the society which
produced and consumed them.
The record of Heywood's career in the theatre begins in the
autumn of 1596 when Henslowe, the theatrical entrepreneur who
funded the Admiral's Men, recorded 30 shillings 'lent unto them
for hawodes bocke'. In 1598 he was hired to Henslowe 'as a
covenante searvante for ii yeares ... not to playe any wher
publicke a bowt london ... but in my howsse'. 6 His subsequent
career as sharer and principal playwright for Worcester's Men
and, after 1603, for the Queen's Men, put him at the centre of
London's commercial theatre world. Dekker's career as a
playwright was a more journeyman affair. He frequently appears
in Henslowe's records as a part of a team of play-producers7 as
well as producing in 1599, his best-known play, The Shoemaker's
Holiday for the Admiral's Men. Dekker's free-floating career
brought him fewer financial rewards (he was in prison for debt
from 1614-18)8 than those provided by the jOint professions of