British Shakespeare Association Biennial Conference 2005
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Programme : Panels - Seminars - Workshops
Seminar - Shakespeare and the Marketplace
Saturday 3rd September 2005, 9.30-11.00am,
Bedson Teaching Centre LG37
Participants | Abstracts | Call for Papers
Participants
Convenor - Deborah Cartmell, De Montfort University
Convenor
- Julia Briggs, De Montfort University
Part 1
Duncan Salkeld, University College Chichester
Transactions: New Allusions to London
Playhouses, 1575-1604
John Blakeley, College of St. Mark and St. John
'As You Like it and the Bishops' Ban'
Part 2
Mary Polito, University of Calgary
'The Fantasy of Full "Accompts": Falstaff and
Accounting for Professions'
Niels Herold, Oakland University
Shakespeare and the Question of Distance Learning
Ms. Bobye Ruddell, Central Washington University
The Fantasy of Full 'Accompts': Falstaff and Accounting
for Profession
Abstracts
Transactions: New Allusions to London Playhouses,
1575-1604
Duncan Salkeld, University College Chichester
A small number of references to Elizabethan 'shewes', dramatic performances
and theatres occur among thousands of prosecutions for petty crime recorded
in the Bridewell Hospital archives. The earliest of these references concerns
an allegedly planned 'maye game' that
threatened public order in 1575. Among further allusions, Thomasine Breame,
a notorious brothel madam, returned from a play in the winter of 1577 to lie
all night with the prostitute wife of a pimp, Thomas Wise. In 1578, Elizabeth
Everys attended a play at the Bell inn, Bishopsgate where she was given money,
and a year later Jane Wolmer went with one of Leicester's men to a play at the
Curtain. In 1579, John Gosse was caught whipping boys for sexual gratification
near the Theatre. Alice Pinder, returning from a play perhaps at Blackfriars
in 1600, gave one Robert [?] Welche 'thuse and carnall knowledge of her bodye'.
Finally, the Bridewell depositions make two hitherto unknown references to the
Rose playhouse. They add to our understanding of playgoing in the period and
have some bearing on broader questions
regarding the social composition of audiences at the early theatres.
'As You Like it and the Bishops' Ban'
John Blakeley, College of St. Mark and St. John
Debates about the legitimacy of satire and the position of the satirist were given a particular urgency by the calling in of a number of verse satires, and prohibition of their further publication, ordered by Bishops Whitgift and Bancroft in 1599. Topical allusion to the matter has been identified in the exchange between Duke Senior and Jaques in As You Like It (2.7), a scene that can be related to broader questions of authority and liberty of expression in the play. Indeed, recently described as ‘Shakespeare’s most explicitly personal play’, we can see it as a subtle mid-career negotiation of his own position as a writer, in the light of the dangerous transgressions of his contemporaries.
I will take this conclusion further by focusing upon the possible significances
of Shakespeare’s use of Lodge’s Rosalynde (1590) as his source.
Lodge wrote no further after the Bishops’ Ban, though he lived a further
26 years, and we can discern a further intriguing coincidence between a play
so concerned with exile and Lodge’s effective exile in France. I will
consider whether Shakespeare’s choice of source for this play can be seen
as an act of defiance, hommage, or correction?
Call for Papers
Below is the original Call for Papers, as circulated. Please note that the date for submissions has passed and the successful participants and the titles of their papers are listed above.
Convenor: Deborah Cartmell and Julia Briggs (De Montfort University)
This session will look at Shakespeare and issues related to the marketplace,
both in Shakespeare's own period and today. Papers are invited on topics such
as marketing in Early Modern London, Shakespeare's representation of marketing,
Shakespeare's commercialism, Shakespeare's commercial value, the economics of
Shakespeare criticism, marketing Shakespeare and the name, 'Shakespeare' in
relation to the marketplace. The session will look at how an understanding of
marketing Shakespeare today sheds light on Shakespeare's own marketing practices
and vice versa.
Contact: Deborah Cartmell (djc@dmu.ac.uk)
and Julie Briggs (jbriggs@dmu.ac.uk)
