Roaring Boys: Playwrights and Players in Elizabethan and Jacobean England - Softcover

Cook, Judith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0750933690 ISBN 13: 9780750933698

Publisher: The History Press, 2006

Synopsis

With the help of anecdotes, this book aims to recreate the lives and times of the playwrights and actors such as, Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and Jonson, as well as the world in which they lived from 1578 when Burbage built the first 'purpose built' theatre to 1620 when the great age came to its end.

About this title

Synopsis

In the late 1580s a new kind of entertainment flowered in London: professional theatre, with its custom built playhouses, professional companies, incredible staging and, last but not least, the new writers, poets, playwrights - the roaring boys. To ambitious young writers, London was a magnet offering the possibility of fame, excitement, wealth and opportunity beyond their wildest dreams. Arriving in London from quite ordinary backgrounds - Marlowe was the son of a shoemaker, Shakespeare's family were leather workers, Jonson's stepfather a bricklayer - they suddenly found themselves feted, offered large sums of money, the darlings of audiences - and they created drama off stage as well as on. Like footballer and media celebrities of today, they behaved like the stars they thought themselves to be - drinking with wild abandon, partying, courting publicity - their reputations growing in the telling. Some set out to shock; some drank too much, some, like Christopher Marlowe, became involved in fights, fatally; a few ran headlong into political danger.

This lively and engaging book, packed with anecdote, recreates the lives and times of these playwrights and actors, and the world in which they lived from 1578 when Burbage built the first purpose built theatre to 1620 when the great age came to its end.

About the Author

Judith Cook was a journalist, playwright and writer of non-fiction. Her books on the theatre included Directors' Theatre, Women in Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Players, and Backstage and she also worked as a part-time lecturer at Exeter University in the Department of Elizabethan/Jacobean Theatre. She died in 2004.

About this edition

• Publisher: The History Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0750933690
• ISBN 13: 9780750933698
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240