The History Of European Theatre

6.68Leicester’s Men: A Conversation with Laurie JohnsonEpisode 181:For today’s guest episode it’s a pleasure to welcome Laurie Johnson to the podcast.  Laurie’s book ‘Leicester’s Men and their Plays’ is a fascination study of one of the most influential of the playing troupes of the Elizabethan period and the story of how they lived and functioned under one of the most influential nobles in the land.  As you will hear Laurie’s research to try to draw an ever-better picture of the players and playing in the period is ongoing and leading to some interesting postulations.Laurie Johnson is Professor of English and Cultural Studies at University of Southern Queensland and a Fellow of both the Society of Antiquaries of London and the Royal Historical Society. His current roles include President of the Marlowe Society of America, Research Dramaturg for the Oxford Marlowe Project, Academic Adviser to the Museum of Shakespeare, Shoreditch, and Project Researcher for the Weather Extremes in England’s Little Ice Age,1500-1700 database.  His publications include The Earl of Leicester’s Men and their Plays and Shakespeare’s Lost Playhouse: Eleven Days in Newington Butts.UK Link to 'Leicester's Men': https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leicesters-Men-their-Plays-Elizabethan/dp/1009366491/ref=sr_1_1?US Link to 'Leicester's Men': https://www.amazon.com/Leicesters-Men-their-Plays-Elizabethan-ebook/dp/B0CG28GHN9/ref=sr_1_1?Link to the Oxford Marlowe Project: https://research.kent.ac.uk/marlowe-works/Support the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetp Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 180:Much Ado About Nothing remains one of the more popular comedies where the characters of Benedick and Beatrice are usually thought of as the leading characters, but this play is much more of an ensemble piece than might be usually remembered.The dating of the playThe print history of the playEarly performances of the playThe sources for the playThe significance of the titleA Synopsis of the playThe views of the male character, all soldiers, in the playThe pairings of Hero and Claudio and Beatrice and BenedickMargaret and her views on marriageCommunication and miscommunicationThe changes Shakespeare made to his sourcesPublic honour and public shamingPride and pridefulnessDogberry and the watchWhy didn’t Shakespeare dramatize the fooling of Claudio?Reality and imagination in the play‘Much Ado About Nothing’s relationship with ‘The Taming of the Shrew’The performance history of the playSupport the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetp Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 179:For today’s guest episode it is a welcome return for Kay Daly to the podcast.  In our second conversation Kay discusses Jonson’s world view and how it differed from Shakespeare’s, which we discussed in our first conversation plays.  If you have not already done so, listening to that conversation, which is episode 177, and my recent episodes on Jonson’s early plays ‘The Case Is Altered’, ‘Every Man Out of his Humour’ and ‘Every Man In His Humour’ would be a good idea before listening to this conversation.Kay Daly is a writer, novelist, book and theatre reviewer, teacher, and public humanities advocate.  Since earning her Ph.D. in English Literature from Northwestern University, she has written for a variety of publications and organizations including The Chicago Review of Books, TimeOut Chicago, the Metropolitan Opera, WNET New York Public Media, The Library of Virginia’s blog UnCommonwealth, Dramatics Magazine, and Centerstage Chicago. She also teaches adult enrichment courses focusing on arts and humanities at the Newberry Library in Chicago.  Her debut novel ‘Wilton House’, based on the life of 17th-century writer Lady Mary Wroth, will be published by Regal House Publishing in 2027Support the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetp Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 178:Ben Jonson's humours play 'Every Man in His Humour' was a big success and Jonson chose to name his next comedy in a very similar way, just substituting ‘in’ for ‘out’, no doubt to capitalise on the success of the earlier play by letting the public know that this was going to be a play in a very similar vein, and although there are no points where the plots or characters cross over during the plays the humour and satire are similar.  However, there are also some significant differences between the two plays with the latter offering being more complex structurally and even less reliant on a plot that it’s predecessor.The early performance history of the play and it’s receptionThe dating of the playThe early print history of the playThe amendments in the first folio versionA Synopsis of the plotThe framing deviceMacalente the malcontentCarlo Buffone and the drinking gameSogliardo the stoogeDelerio and FalaceFastidious Brisk, his wardrobe and FungosoThe strange inclusion of Sordidio, the miserly farmerPuntovolo, his wife, his dog and his catThe fate of Puntovolo’s dogThe language style of the playThe Italian setting of the playThe war of the theatresWhy was the play less successful than it’s predecessor?Support the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetp Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 177:For today’s guest episode it is a warm welcome for Kay Daly to the podcast.  In our conversation Kay took the opportunity to give an overview of Shakespeare’s world view as seen through his earlier plays and particularly the comedies.  As you will hear we strayed a little into some later plays, but Kay’s thoughts seemed particularly useful at this point as we are about to move away from the earliest plays and move onto new and very different experiments in comedy.  I hope you enjoy the conversation and find useful as a kind of summary of what I have covered so far on the podcast in respect to Shakespeare.Kay Daly is a writer, novelist, book and theatre reviewer, teacher, and public humanities advocate.  Since earning her Ph.D. in English Literature from Northwestern University, she has written for a variety of publications and organizations including The Chicago Review of Books, TimeOut Chicago, the Metropolitan Opera, WNET New York Public Media, The Library of Virginia’s blog UnCommonwealth, Dramatics Magazine, and Centerstage Chicago. She also teaches adult enrichment courses focusing on arts and humanities at the Newberry Library in Chicago.  Her debut novel ‘Wilton House’, based on the life of 17th-century writer Lady Mary Wroth, will be published by Regal House Publishing in 2027.Support the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetp Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 176:In ‘Every Man In His Humour’ Jonson pays a debt to Roman comedy, but also shows us, in an almost fully formed way, his very own style.  This is not the biting satire of many of his plays, but something a little gentler in that he is not taking aim at specific people and certainly not at the court, as he was to do later.  ‘Every Man in His Humour’ is a city comedy with it’s large cast of London characters and it is they, as a group, who are Jonson’s target on this occasion. The early performance history of the playThe printing history of the playThe differences between the quarto and folio versions of the playThe London setting of and as a character in the playA synopsis of the playThe complexity of the plot structureThe effect of ‘humours’ on characterThe comedic characters based on Roman comic charactersAn analysis of the prologueBrainworm the instigator of deceptionEdward Knowell the portrait of a London StudentOld Knowell as a sympathetic fatherMathew the poet and butt of the jokeBobadil the braggart soldierKitely the jealous husbandThe later performance history of the playThe use of prose in the play Support the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetp Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 175:On today’s guest episode we welcome Andrea Smith to the podcast.  Andrea’s book ‘Shakespeare on the Radio’ has just been published and she kindly agreed to come on and give us some highlights from her very detailed review of Shakespeare on BBC radio in the last one hundred years.Andrea Smith is a lecturer at the University of Suffolk, specialising in Shakespeare and audio drama.  Her research looks at how stage plays can be turned into something purely aural through voice, music, sound effects and other non-verbal noises.Link to amazon UK site: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shakespeare-Radio-Century-BBC-Plays/dp/1399547283/ref=sr_1_1?Link to Edinburgh University Press site: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-shakespeare-on-the-radio.htmlLink to BBC Sounds Drama on 3 page:https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/b006tnwjLink to Box of Broadcasts landing page:https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/bob/Link to the online appendix listing all BBC Shakespeare productions up to 2024, which is listed in the ‘resources’ tab towards the bottom of the page:https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-shakespeare-on-the-radio.htmlSupport the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetp Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 174:Ben Jonson's erliest play. Here we have the bricklayer’s son trying to make his way in the theatre and with the court.  Until James came to the throne, he was pretty unsuccessful in the latter and as far as we can tell more of less from the off his life writing for the public theatre was controversial.  I recounted the events surrounding Johnson and Nashe’s play ‘The Isle of Dogs’ as part of Jonson’s life story and ‘The Case Is Altered’ probably pre-dates those events.  What we can be sure of is that by 1597, the most likely date for ‘The Case Is Altered’ Jonson was working for Pembroke’s Men and that they probably performed the play in May or June that year.The complications of the printing history of the playThe origins of the titleJonson borrows from Plautus to create a romantic comedyThe satire of Anthony MundayA brief summary of both strands of the plotThe structural issues with the play and purely comic scenesThe theory of the HumorsThe character of Count FernezeThe character of Jacques the miserThe concealment of the goldThe slight characters of the three female rolesSupport the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetp Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 173:For this guest episode it is a very welcome return for Eleanor Conlon, who you will remember discussed Titus Andronicus with me in Episode 22 of this season.  Having picked over the brutal actions of that play with Eleanor I was pleased to hear that she was interested in a return visit and to discuss the very different piece that is Love’s Labour’s Lost.  As you will her Eleanor has a great love of this play and brings all the enthusiasm about it to our conversation that you as might expect.  If you have not already done so I would recommend listening to my previous episode on Love’s Labour’s Lost before starting on this one, which adds a lot to what I said in that episode.Eleanor Conlon is an actor, director, and award-winning writer based in Sussex.After completing her BA in English Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London, Eleanor earned her MA in Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama at Kings College and Shakespeare’s Globe. While at The Globe, Eleanor worked dramaturgically on productions by Dominic Dromgoole, Matthew Dunster, and Jeremy Herrin, and with Jenny Tiramani on the Original Practices Costume Archive.As an academic, her research focused on Renaissance Magic, Gender and Culture in Early Modern London, though for more than a decade her career has been less theoretical and more practical.  After achieving success with her theatre company ‘The Barefoot Players’ in the late 2000s and early 2010s, with which she produced plays including ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore’, ‘Doctor Faustus’ and ‘The Alchemist’, the latter two of which she also directed, as well as productions of several of Shakespeare’s works, plays by Ibsen, Oscar Wilde, and others.  She founded her current theatre company ‘Rust & Stardust’ where working with her puppet-maker partner Katie Sommers Eleanor has written over a dozen plays rooted in English folklore and toured these shows all over the UK.In addition to all this, and as you are about to hear, in 2023 she launched the Three Ravens Podcast with her partner Martin Vaux – also a writer and actor – which explores history, legends, and diverse aspects of folk culture.Link to Three Ravens Podcast website: www.threeravenspodcast.comFor the Three Ravens Folktales Book:Link to Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Three-Ravens-Folk-Tales-half-forgotten/dp/1803999683Link To Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Three-Ravens-Folk-Tales-half-forgotten-ebook/dp/B0CW1GB63M/ref=sr_1_1Support the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetp Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 172:The dating of the playThe early publication history of the playThe sources for the playA synopsis of the playA play that explores language and it’s limitsThe opening sceneConstable DullThe central ‘reveal’ scene and it’s poetryThe character and behaviour of CostardThe longest word in the Shakespeare cannonThe pageant of the nine worthiesThe character of JacquenettaShakespeare’s parody and homage to previous literary formsThe meaning of the title of the playThe concept of ‘the academy’ and comparisons with Elizabeth’s courtThe critical reception of the playThe performance history of the playSupport the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetp Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.