scholarly journals Introduction: Rethinking Performance in Early Modern England

Early Theatre ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Mayne
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Current Work ◽  
English Drama ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Critical Understanding ◽  
Early English

This Early Theatre ‘Issues in Review’ explores concepts of ‘performance’ in late medieval and early modern England. Responding to current work on drama, festivity and spectatorship, and to the ongoing editorial project Records of Early English Drama (REED), essays address questions such as: what constitutes performance in pre-modern contexts? where, and in what types of texts, can evidence of medieval and early modern performance be located? and what can rethinking ideas of performance and sources do for critical understanding of medieval and early modern culture and drama? [Please note this Abstract and Title are for the whole 'Issues in Review'.]

Drama and ceremony in early modern England: the REED project

Urban History ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 38-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sally-Beth MacLean
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Theatre History ◽  
English Drama ◽  
Stated Goal ◽  
Musical Activity ◽  
Early English

In 1976 a medieval and renaissance theatre history project was launched under the masthead Records of Early English Drama (now more familiarly known as REED). The official launch had taken two years of planning by scholars from Britain, Canada and the United States, and was given assurance for the future through a ten-year major Editorial Grant from the Canada Council. REED's stated goal – then as now – was to find, transcribe and publish evidence of dramatic, ceremonial and musical activity in Great Britain before the theatres were closed in 1642. The systematic survey undertaken would make available for analysis records relating to the evolution of English theatre from its origins in minstrelsy, through the flowering of drama in the renaissance, to the suppression first of local and then of professional entertainment under the Puritans.

scholarly journals Perambulation and Performance in Early Modern Festive Culture

Early Theatre ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Woodcock
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
English Drama ◽  
Festive Culture ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Early English

This essay examines the performative aspect of observances and festivities associated with Rogationtide, or ‘perambulation day’, in early modern England. After considering pre- and post-Reformation Rogationtide traditions, it identifies how these occasions were an opportunity for communities and parishes to reflect upon and consolidate local boundaries and identities. It also explores how documentary evidence for perambulations broadens critical understandings of the mimetic, musical, and festive activities recorded in the Records of Early English Drama (REED) project, posing methodological questions about using performance as well as mimesis as a characteristic determining a record’s inclusion in a REED collection.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna-Maria Hartmann
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary History ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Related Material ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
Early English

Mythographies were books that collected, explained, and interpreted myth-related material. Extremely popular during the Renaissance, these works appealed to a wide range of readers. While the European mythographies of the sixteenth century have been utilized by scholars, the short, early English mythographies, written from 1577 to 1647, have puzzled critics. The first generation of English mythographers did not, as has been suggested, try to compete with their Italian predecessors. Instead, they made mythographies into rhetorical instruments designed to intervene in topical debates outside the world of classical learning. Because English mythographers brought mythology to bear on a variety of contemporary issues, they unfold a lively and historically well-defined picture of the roles myth was made to play in early modern England. Exploring these mythographies can contribute to previous insights into myth in the Renaissance offered by studies of iconography, literary history, allegory, and myth theory.

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