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Dekker and Heywood: Professional Dramatists PDF

208 Pages·1994·19.492 MB·English
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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 this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. 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

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