Kent: Diocese of Canterbury

The Records of Early English Drama (REED) series aims to establish the context for the great drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries by examining the historical manuscripts that provide external evidence of drama, secular music, and other communal entertainment and ceremony from the Middle Ages until Puritan legislation closed the London theatres in 1642. REED’s 16th collection, this volume contains the evidence of dramatic, musical and ceremonial activity in the city of Canterbury and in the towns and parishes of the diocese of Canterbury, taken from the borough records, parish records, civil and ecclesiastical court records, and from personal papers such as wills, diaries and letters. This collection includes over 4000 payments to travelling players from the earliest recorded payment in 1272, when the monks of Christ Church, Canterbury, paid for entertainment on the feast day of St Thomas Becket, to the last recorded payment in 1641 in Puritan Canterbury for players not to play. It also features the Canterbury marching watch with pageants, including the pageant of St Thomas Becket; the New Romney passion play; numerous visits of nobility and royalty to Faversham, Canterbury and Dover, being the main stops along Watling Street between London and the Continent; the activities of waits, drummers and other civic musicians in the ancient towns and cities of Kent; and evidence from court cases, borough ordinances, and chamberlains’ payments of the suppression of dramatic activity during the Puritan years of the late-16th and 17th centuries. As with all REED volumes, this text is transcribed from the original sources, edited, and presented with explanatory notes, translations, and a general introduction.