Overview

Dramatic performances at the universities in early modern England have usually been regarded as insular events, completely removed from the plays of the London stage. Shakespeare and University Drama in Early Modern England challenges that long-held notion, illuminating how an apparently secluded theatrical culture became a major source of inspiration for Shakespeare and his contemporaries. While many university plays featured classical themes, others reflected upon the academic environments in which they were produced, allowing a window into the universities themselves. This window proved especially fruitful for Shakespeare, who, as this book reveals, had a sustained fascination with the universities and their inhabitants. Daniel Blank provides groundbreaking new readings of plays from throughout Shakespeare's career, illustrating how depictions of academic culture in Love's Labour's Lost, Hamlet, and Macbeth were shaped by university plays.Shakespeare was not unique, however. This book also discusses the impact of university drama on professional plays by Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, and Ben Jonson, all of whom in various ways facilitated the connection between the university stage and the London commercial stage. Yet this connection, perhaps counterintuitively, is most significant in the works of a playwright who had no formal attachment to Oxford or Cambridge. Shakespeare, this study shows, was at the center of a rich exchange between two seemingly disparate theatrical worlds.

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9780192886095

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The study of university drama is not a closed book...Both current and future students have reason to be grateful to Daniel Blank...for providing a mass of new material and original perspectives which restore this important corpus to its deserved prominence. * Paul Dean, English Studies * In his scrupulously researched book brimming with extensive and new archival evidence, Daniel Blank provides textual, philological, and critical analysis of the plays with their extra-textual context, the printing of university drama, and the interaction between academic and commercial plays. The result of this comprehensive critical perspective is a book that makes a significant contribution to the history of early modern English drama as printed text and stage performance. * Goran Stanivukovic, Renaissance and Reformation * The study illuminates intriguing avenues for further research, as we continue to formulate a fuller understanding of the significance and influence of the university stage. It is to be hoped that Blank's important and incisive work encourages further interest in this rich and still too often overlooked facet of early modern dramatic culture. * Jennie Challinor, The Review of English Studies * In his scrupulously researched book brimming with extensive and new archival evidence, Daniel Blank provides textual, philological, and critical analysis of the plays with their extra-textual context, the printing of university drama, and the interaction between academic and commercial plays * Comptes Rendus *

The study of university drama is not a closed book...Both current and future students have reason to be grateful to Daniel Blank...for providing a mass of new material and original perspectives which restore this important corpus to its deserved prominence. * Paul Dean, English Studies *

Author Information

Daniel Blank is Assistant Professor in Early Modern Literature, 1500-1700 at Durham University. His research and teaching interests include Shakespeare, early modern drama, and theater history, as well as the intellectual culture and classical heritage of the early modern period.

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