Shakespeare's Theater: A Source Book

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 386
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Shakespeare’s Theater: A Sourcebook brings together in one volume the most significant Elizabethan and Jacobean texts on the morality of the theater.

• A collection of the most significant Elizabethan and Jacobean texts on the morality of the theater.
  
• Includes attacks on the stage by moralists, defences by actors and playwrights, letters by magistrates, mayors and aldermen of London, and extracts from legislation.
  
• Demonstrates just how heated debates about the theater became in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
  
• A general introduction and short prefaces to each piece situate the writers and debates in the literary, social, political and religious history of the time.
  
• Brings together in one volume texts that would otherwise be hard to locate.
  
• Student-friendly - uses modern spelling and includes vocabulary glosses and annotation.

Content:
Chapter 1 A Treatise Against Dicing, Dancing, Plays, and Interludes, with other Idle Pastimes (1577) (pages 1–18): John Northbrooke
Chapter 2 The School of Abuse (1579) (pages 19–33): Stephen Gosson
Chapter 3 An Apology of the School of Abuse (1579) (pages 34–36): Stephen Gosson
Chapter 4 A Reply to Stephen Gosson's School of Abuse, in Defence of Poetry, Music, and Stage Plays (1579) (pages 37–61): Thomas Lodge
Chapter 5 A Second and Third Blast of Retreat from Plays and Theaters (1580) (pages 62–83): Anthony Munday
Chapter 6 Plays Confuted in Five Actions (1582) (pages 84–114): Stephen Gosson
Chapter 7 Anatomy of Abuses (1583) (pages 115–123): Philip Stubbes
Chapter 8 A Mirror of Monsters (1587) (pages 124–134): William Rankins
Chapter 9 The Art of English Poesy (1589) (pages 135–145): George Puttenham
Chapter 10 An Apology For Poetry (1595) (pages 146–165): Philip Sidney
Chapter 11 The Theatre of God's Judgments (1597) (pages 166–169): Thomas Beard
Chapter 12 The Overthrow of Stage?Plays (1599) (pages 170–178): John Rainolds
Chapter 13 Letter to Dr. John Rainolds (1592) (pages 179–187): William Gager
Chapter 14 Virtue's Commonwealth (1603) (pages 188–197): Henry Crosse
Chapter 15 Preface to Volpone (1607) (pages 198–205): Ben Jonson
Chapter 16 The Gull's Horn Book (1609) (pages 206–212): Thomas Dekker
Chapter 17 An Apology for Actors (1612) (pages 213–254): Thomas Heywood
Chapter 18 A Refutation of the Apology for Actors (1615) (pages 255–273): I. G. John Greene
Chapter 19 Letter to Revd. Mr. Sutton (1616) (pages 274–278): Nathan Field
Chapter 20 Histriomastix: The Player's Scourge (1633) (pages 279–298): William Prynne
Chapter 21 Discoveries (1641) (pages 297–300): Ben Jonson
Chapter 22 Legal Acts and Correspondence Pertaining to the Theater (pages 301–336):