Textual Patronage in English Drama, 1570-1640Routledge, 2017 M11 28 - 257 pages Through an investigation of the dedications and addresses from various printed plays of the English Renaissance, the author recuperates the richness of these prefaces and connects them to the practice of patronage. The prefatory matter discussed ranges from the printer John Day's address to readers (the first of its kind) in the 1570 edition of Gorboduc to Richard Brome's dedication to William Seymour and address to readers in his 1640 play, Antipodes. The study includes discussion of prefaces in plays by Shakespeare's contemporaries as well as Shakespeare himself, among them Marston, Jonson, and Heywood. The author uses these prefaces to show that English playwrights, printers and publishers looked in two directions, toward aristocrats and toward a reading public, in order to secure status for and dissemination of dramatic texts. The author points out that dedications and addresses to readers constitute obvious signs that printers, publishers and playwrights in the period increasingly saw these dramatic texts as occupying a rightful place in the humanistic and commercial endeavor of book production. |
From inside the book
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... texts to print, once such publication became feasible. But what about this text that playwrights produced and printers gave material reality? Wendy Wall writes: "Theatrical texts were even more unauthorized than poetic texts, for ...
... texts to print, once such publication became feasible. But what about this text that playwrights produced and printers gave material reality? Wendy Wall writes: "Theatrical texts were even more unauthorized than poetic texts, for ...
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... printed page" (p. 23). It has been fashionable in "performance criticism" to denigrate the play as a published text, insisting that it had life only in the theater, an idea that I do not share. This current book clearly rests on the ...
... printed page" (p. 23). It has been fashionable in "performance criticism" to denigrate the play as a published text, insisting that it had life only in the theater, an idea that I do not share. This current book clearly rests on the ...
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... print this front matter last: the last shall be first. As we shall see, some of these dedications and addresses may come ... texts themselves, even though they sit as an appendage to the main text; they form a textual frame by which and ...
... print this front matter last: the last shall be first. As we shall see, some of these dedications and addresses may come ... texts themselves, even though they sit as an appendage to the main text; they form a textual frame by which and ...
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... text of the play . I like to imagine these dedications and addresses as ... printing had arrived late and where it was deficient in technique and ... print was a.
... text of the play . I like to imagine these dedications and addresses as ... printing had arrived late and where it was deficient in technique and ... print was a.
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... print became an important vehicle for the representation of the Renaissance ... text."42 Short of letters, diaries, or comments from others, we have no ... texts, underlines the authorial quest, that the textual economies of textual ...
... print became an important vehicle for the representation of the Renaissance ... text."42 Short of letters, diaries, or comments from others, we have no ... texts, underlines the authorial quest, that the textual economies of textual ...
Contents
Pageants Masques | |
Women as Patrons of Drama | |
Marston and Colleagues | |
Shakespeare and Folio | |
Thomas Heywoods Apology for Readers 16081638 | |
Textual Patronage in | |
Lenvoi | |
Index | |
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Common terms and phrases
acknowledges actor's voice actors address readers address to readers Apology authorship Beaumont Ben Jonson Blount Brome Cambridge University Press Chapman Churchyard comedy Countess Countess of Bedford court cultural dedications and addresses discussion dramatic texts dramatists Earl edition English entertainment epistle dedicatory favor Fletcher Folio function genre hath Heminge and Condell Henry Herbert brothers honor insists Jacobean James Shirley John Ford John Marston Jones Jonson King's King's Men Lady literary Loewenstein London Lord Chamberlain Marston masque Massinger mayor Middleton Moseley noble construction offers pageant paratexts patrons Pembroke performance Philip Massinger Philotas play playhouse playtexts playwright poems poet preface prefatory documents prefatory material printed text printers and publishers publication quarto Queen quotations reading refers Renaissance Richard Robert Samuel Daniel seek Sejanus Shakespeare system of patronage textual economy textual patronage theater audiences theatrical Thomas Dekker Thomas Heywood Thomas Middleton Tragedy underscores Volpone Webster William women writes