Description
The records of dramatic performances at the Inns of Court, drawn from a variety of manuscript and printed sources, reveal a rich history of revels, plays, masques and secular music.
London's four Inns of Court (Gray's Inn, Lincoln's Inn, and the Inner and the Middle Temple) served, probably from the fourteenth century, as nurseries not only of common law and lawyers, but of the social arts of music and dancing, and of the mimetic arts of comedy, tragedy, and the masque. Their denizens composed and acted in their own plays, especially in the 1560s under Elizabeth I, and performed in masques composed by professional playwrights in the Jacobean period.
This three-volume edition of dramatic records surviving from the Inns of Court collection includes material from manuscripts and printed books from the archives and libraries of all four Inns, as well as fromThe National Archives, the British Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library and other repositories, covering over 200 years from 1407 to the closing of the theatres in 1642. Of particular note are account entries from the beginningof the seventeenth century which situate performances of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors (1594) and Twelfth Night (1602) in the context of annual visits to the Inns of Court by professional playing companies, such as(after 1603) the king's men.
The Introduction provides a survey of Christmas entertainment supervised by Inns of Court Masters of the Revels and Christmas Princes, including minstrels, a lion-tamer, musicians, disguisings, plays, masques, and even a puppet-show. The illustrations (ground-plans and plates) offer evidence of the original performance conditions for Inns of Court plays and masques.
Alan H. Nelson is Professor of English Emeritusat the University of California, Berkeley; the late John R. Elliott Jr was Professor of English at Syracuse University.
Table of Contents
Volume 1
Introduction
Select Bibliography
Maps
The Records
Volume 2
Appendix 1: Christmas Prince Revels
Appendix 2: Masque Texts
Appendix 3: Speeches and Barriers
Appendix 4: Eyewitness Accounts
Appendix 5: Royal and Civic Records
Appendix 6: Bibliography of Inns of Court Entertainment
Appendix 7: Cast Lists
Appendix 8: Chronological List of Inns of Court Performances
Appendix 9: Inner Temple Instructions for the Master of the Revels
Appendix 10: William Prynne's Discourse against Revels
Appendix 11: Dugdale's Origines Juridiciales
Appendix 12: Bacon's Essay on Masques and Triumphs
Appendix 13: Music and Dance at the Inns of Court
Appendix 14: Inns of Court Gentlemen as Playgoers
Appendix 15: Inns of Court Playwrights
Appendix 16: Saints' Days and Festivals
Volume 3
Translations
Endnotes
Glossaries
Indexes
by "Nielsen BookData"
