Eva Griffith's book fills a major gap concerning the world of Shakespearean drama. It tells the previously untold story of the Servants of Queen Anna of Denmark, a group of players parallel to Shakespeare's King's Men, and their London playhouse, The Red Bull. Built in vibrant Clerkenwell, The Red Bull lay within the northern suburbs of Jacobean London, with prostitution to the west and the Revels Office to the east. Griffith sets the playhouse in the historical context of the Seckford and Bedingfeld families and their connections to the site. Utilising a wealth of primary evidence including maps, plans and archival texts, she analyses the court patronage of figures such as Sir Robert Sidney, Queen Anna's chamberlain, alongside the company's members, function and repertoire. Plays performed included those by Webster, Dekker and Heywood - entertainments characterised by spectacle, battle sequence and courtroom drama, alongside London humour and song.
A Jacobean Company and its Playhouse : The Queen's Servants at the Red Bull Theatre (c.1605-1619)
Description
Table of Contents
Introduction: The Red Bull Theatre, St John Street; 1. Elizabethan contexts for a Jacobean playhouse: Clerkenwell, East Anglia, the Strand and the Liberty of the Clink (1586–99); 2. The Earl of Worcester, the Essex Circle, the Queen's Servants and their playhouses (1586–1607); 3. Who were the Queen's Servants? What was the Red Bull like?; 4. The court and its women: Queen Anna, her circle, and some women-centred plays; 5. Entities and splinter groups: the Queen's Servants' companies at the courts, in England and in Europe; 6. The company: 1605–12; 7. The company: 1612–19; Conclusion: St John's Day at night.
Author Description
Eva Griffith is a theatre historian working on early seventeenth-century entertainment, spectacle and drama. She began acting at the age of seven, performing in many film, television and theatre productions. Owing her entire existence to the performance of Shakespeare (her parents met during an Old Vic touring production of A Midsummer Night's Dream), she was encouraged in an interest in literature and history through united family concerns. As an academic she has researched internationally with the help of fellowships for example at the Huntington Library and the Harry Ransom Center in America, gaining funding, prizes and bursaries from the British Academy, the Malone Society and the Society for Theatre Research. She has published on Red Bull-related topics in Huntington Library Quarterly and in Richard Dutton's award-winning Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theatre. She is currently working on a book on the poet, playwright and masque-writer, James Shirley, having written on him for The Times Literary Supplement and Four Courts Press. She acted as Research Associate on The Complete Works of James Shirley at Durham University and is editing a play for this large-scale edition - Changes; or, Love in a Maze.