Playgoing in Shakespeare's London

[Playgoing in Shakespeare's London] - Andrew Gurr (second edition)
There were no theatre critics in the period 1580-1642 and so what happened at the theatres has to be pieced together from, letters, epigrams, poems, chronicles, pamphlets and legal documents. Anthony Gurr has identified 195 people identified as having attended a theatre of some sort between 1567 and 1642 (he lists their names with a brief reference in an appendix). Of those 195 only three of them provided eye witness accounts. In a further appendix there are 210 entries that mention the theatre in one context or another: Here is an example from a letter by Sir John Davies.

Fuscus is free, and hath the world at will;
Yet in the course of life that he doth lead,
He's like a show more horse which, turning round a mill,
Doth always in the self-same circle tread:
First, he doth rise at ten; and at eleuen
He goes to Gyls, where he doth eate till one;
Then sees a Play till sixe, and sups at seven;
And after supper, straight to bed is gone;
And there till ten next day he doth remaine,
And then he dines, and sees a Comedy;
And then he suppes, and goes to bed againe:
Thus round he runs without variety,
Saue that sometimes he comes not to the Play,
But falls into a whore-house by the way.

If there is so little contemporary information about the plays themselves there is even less about the public that would count as theatregoers. Gurr estimates that there were 50 million visitors to the theatre during the period and so what has come down to us is a small sample of information. It is inevitable that a book such as this would soon exhaust the topic of the theatregoers and move onto a survey of the types of plays produced.

After an introduction Gurr describes the physical conditions that people had to endure to see the plays. There is more information here with sketches and plans of the theatre that were either built or converted. There is a very good chapter on the social composition of London and so he is able to give the reader a description of the likely theatregoers and how they would be accommodated at the theatres. A chapter on the mental composition of theatregoers surmises the levels of education that would be required to understand many of the references in the words of the plays themselves. He makes an interesting point that the theatre may have been many peoples only connection with literature and the artistic world, because if they were not skilled readers there was nothing else. The theatre bought comedy, history and current events in a live format straight to the paying public.

The longest chapter is entitled the evolution of taste and this is where Gurr moves further away from the theatregoing public and surmises what they would have been able to see at the theatre and how this changed during the period. Certainly from the 1580's the morality plays were being replaced by something that we might understand as modern theatre; increasingly plays were designed to entertain and inform. Christopher Marlowe's plays and Thomas Kyd's 'The Spanish Tragedy' paved the way, becoming perennial classics being performed throughout the whole period. Gurr thinks that these popular plays with their spectacular effects would have entertained people from all levels of society. John Lyly's plays harked back to classical theatre and were performed by boys theatre groups in closed theatres and would have been patronised by those connected with the court of the Queen. As the period progressed the nature of the plays changed and it was Gurr's survey of the productions that I found most interesting. Some new theatres were built and others converted from building of different use, but this did not have such an effect on the plays as the changing tastes of some of the public.

This is a well researched book that would appeal to anybody interested in early English (London) theatre. It is written for the general public, but the appendices contain more than enough information for further research. A four star read. show less