[csaa-forum] New Book: Laurie Johnson (2023) Leicester's Men and their Plays

[Andrew Hickey]

Leicester's Men and their Plays: An Early Elizabethan Playing Company and its Legacy

Laurie Johnson

University of Southern Queensland, Australia

For three decades, the Earl of Leicester’s Men dominated the early Elizabethan stage and helped develop the main features of Shakespearean theatre. Leicester’s Men and their Plays is the first book-length study of this foundational playing company, who toured more widely than any other company, performed more often for Queen Elizabeth’s court than any other adult troupe, and established the first major playhouses near London. Building on decades of established scholarship, Laurie Johnson makes exciting new discoveries from primary sources and unearths the rich and fascinating life stories of the first Elizabethan players. His findings overturn fundamental assumptions of theatre history and provide new understandings of the players’ circumstances and family origins. Through incisive research and engaging storytelling, Johnson shows how the players and their families adapted to life working under one of the most powerful nobles in the volatile Elizabethan court.

‘This book is going to be required reading for anyone working on the pre-Shakespearean theatre, and for anyone interested in the cultural and institutional origins of the drama of Shakespeare's own day. It offers a wealth of detail on the history, personnel, repertory, performance habits and touring practices of Leicester's Men, adding materially to existing narratives using unfamiliar archival data and details drawn from the most recent scholarship on the drama's written and archaeological traces. The result is a scrupulously-evidenced account that offers a powerful case for the historical importance of its subject.' Tom Rutter, University of Sheffield
www.cambridge.org/9781009366496





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