Shakespeare in the Theatre: The King's Men

Shakespeare in the Theatre

by Lucy Munro

Created when James I granted royal patronage to the former Chamberlain's Men in 1603, the King's Men were the first playing company to exercise a transformative influence on Shakespeare's plays. Not only did Shakespeare write his plays with them in mind, but they were also the first group to revive his plays, and the first to have them revised, either by Shakespeare himself or by other dramatists after his retirement. Drawing on theatre history, performance studies, cultural history and book history, Shakespeare in the The King's Men reappraises the company as theatre artists, analysing in detail the performance practices, cultural contexts and political pressures that helped to shape and reshape Shakespeare's plays between 1603 and 1642. Reconsidering casting and acting styles, staging and playing venues, audience response, influence and popularity, and local, national and international politics, the book presents case-studies of performances of Macbeth, The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, Richard II, Henry VIII, Othello and Pericles alongside a broader reappraisal of the repertory of the company and the place of Shakespeare's plays within it.

239 pages, Paperback

Published October 21, 2021

Reviews

[Aaron Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is great fun and filled with wonderful details, especially those focused on performances at Court. Munro's book is interested chiefly in the complications that came with the patronage of the crown and so it (unfortunately, to my mind) skips nearly any reference to the company before it became the King's Men. But the detail in here – especially with explorations of performances of The Alchemist, Othello, The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, The Prophetess, Henry VIII, A Game at Chess, Richard II, Pericles, The Princess, Believe as You List, The Custom of the Country, and The Merry Devil of Edmonton – is fascinating!

What's really excellent about this book is that it considers these plays in performance by the King's Men, and so Munro is able to achieve extraordinary insights by moving the texts of the plays into the theatre to ask how they might have worked in the spaces of (especially) the Globe and the Blackfriars themselves.