‘But I perceive there is no love on earth, Pity in Jews, nor piety in Turks…’ (Abigail, after learning her father conspired to get her true love murdered) Provenance First recorded performance: 26 February 1592, by Lord Strange’s acting company. First published: 1592. Earliest extant edition, 1633. This was published to coincide with a revival […]
All posts found when searching for elizabethan theatre
Dido, Queen of Carthage by Christopher Marlowe (1587)
Information about Marlowe’s plays is patchy. Dido, Queen of Carthage is generally thought to be Marlowe’s first play but it is anyone’s guess when it was written, sometime between 1587 when Marlowe arrived in London from Cambridge and 1594 when it was published. The Marlowe scholar Roma Gill thinks it was probably written before Marlowe left […]
Posted by Simon on October 14, 2020
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2020/10/14/dido-queen-of-carthage-christopher-marlowe/
The Alchemist by Ben Jonson (1610)
The Alchemist is a plague play. Not only was it written in 1610, when the London theatres were closed (yet again) for (yet another) outbreak of plague, but the plot itself derives from that fact. The master of the house, Lovewit, has (like everyone else who can afford it) fled London and is waiting at […]
Posted by Simon on September 28, 2020
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2020/09/28/the-alchemist-ben-jonson/
A Chaste Maid in Cheapside by Thomas Middleton (1613)
A Chaste Maid in Cheapside is universally agreed to be the best of the half dozen or so comedies Middleton wrote or co-wrote. It is yet another comedy about sex and class and money, about corruption and greed and adultery – all the usual subjects – in fact the oppressively narrow range of subjects which […]
Posted by Simon on September 25, 2020
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2020/09/25/a-chaste-maid-in-cheapside-thomas-middleton/
The Roaring Girl, or Moll Cutpurse by Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker (1611)
‘Perhaps for my mad going some reprove me: I please myself and care not else who loves me.’ (Moll Cutpurse, the Roaring Girl) According to Elizabeth Cook, editor of the New Mermaid edition of The Roaring Girl, The Elizabethan playwright Thomas Middleton was for centuries dismissed as just another member of the flock of playwrights […]
Posted by Simon on September 23, 2020
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2020/09/23/the-roaring-girl-thomas-middleton-thomas-dekker/
Eastward Ho! by George Chapman, Ben Jonson and John Marston (1605)
Six salient facts: 1. Eastward Ho and Westward Ho were the cries of the watermen who plied on the Thames, telling customers which way they were headed. 2. Eastward Ho! was a collaboration between three leading playwrights of the era, George Chapman, Ben Jonson and John Marston. Scholars have been arguing for centuries about who […]
Posted by Simon on September 16, 2020
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2020/09/16/eastward-ho-george-chapman-ben-jonson-john-marston/
The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith (1766)
The Vicar of Wakefield: A Tale, Supposed to be written by Himself was written by Irish novelist, playwright, poet and critic Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774). It was immediately praised on publication and went on to become one of the most widely read 18th-century novels, and also one of the most widely illustrated, with hundreds of Victorian […]
Posted by Simon on July 13, 2020
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2020/07/13/the-vicar-of-wakefield-oliver-goldsmith/
Books & Boots 