Roaring Boys: Playwrights And Players In Han Elizabethan And Jacobean England - Hardcover

Cook, Judith

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0750933682 ISBN 13: 9780750933681

Publisher: Sutton Pub Ltd, 2005

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 this title

About the Author:

Judith Cook is a journalist, playwright and writer of non-fiction. Her books on the theatre include 'Director's Theatre', 'Women in Shakespeare', 'Shakespeare's Players' and 'Backstage'. She is a part-time lecturer at Exeter University in the Department of Elizabethan/Jacobean Theatre, and she lives in Newlyn, Cornwall.

About this edition

• Publisher: Sutton Pub Ltd
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0750933682
• ISBN 13: 9780750933681
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 212