Illustrations of the English Stage, 1580-1642

This book gathers together for the first time all the important surviving visual evidence on the English stage from the rise of professional theatres in London to their closing in the Commonwealth period. Some of the illustrations (of which there are more than eighty) are familiar but many are not, including a number discovered only recently. Each illustration is accompanied by a commentary that describes what can be seen, assesses its significance and analyses problems of interpretation. The illustrations are divided into five groups in which they are presented chronologically. The first group consists of maps, panoramas and views of London that include theatre buildings. The second group includes drawings and title-page vignettes that illustrate specific actors, stages or plans for converting halls into theatres. The third group is drawn from the printed texts of plays, and features frontispieces and title-pages that appear to relate to the staging and costuming of plays. The fourth group contains a few miscellaneous matters, notably the symbolic theatre thornier problems of theatre history. The fifth section considers illustrations in playtexts apparently having no reference to the stage. A number of the illustrations have given rise to widely varying interpretations about their historical accuracy and significance. In subjecting the visual evidence of this period to fresh scrutiny, the author attempts to provide objective information about the value as evidence of each item, and in so doing has provided a book of the very first importance for all students of Shakespearian theatre.<