United States or Yemen ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The characters of the play, which is written in rime, are of the English middle class. Gammer Gurton's Needle, the work of William Stevenson, a little-known pre-Shakespearean writer, was acted at Christ's College, Cambridge, shortly after the middle of the sixteenth century. This play borrows hardly anything from the classical stage.
The thing is absurd," continued the Great Actor, as he reached down two or three heavy volumes from the shelf beside him. "Have you ever studied the Elizabethan era?" "The which?" we asked modestly. "The Elizabethan era?" We were silent. "Or the pre-Shakespearean tragedy?" We hung our head. "If you had, you would know that a Hamlet in black velvet is perfectly ridiculous.
All these must have belonged to the earliest répertoire of The Theatre, for Gosson's School of Abuse appeared in 1579. It is of more interest that Thomas Lodge mentions the original pre-Shakespearean Hamlet as having been acted in The Theatre. He speaks of one who "looks as pale as the visard of the ghost which cries so miserably at The Theatre, like an oister-wife, 'Hamlet revenge."
Lawrence's Elizabethan Playhouse and Other Studies. Symonds's Shakespeare's Predecessors in the English Drama. Bates's The English Religious Drama. Manly's Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama. Wallace's The Evolution of the English Drama up to Shakespeare. Ingram's Christopher Marlowe and his Associates. Symonds's Ben Jonson. Swinburne's A Study of Ben Jonson. Shakespeare
Why would Shakespeare's plays have been impossible if the evolution of the drama had stopped with Gorboduc? Pre-Shakespearean Dramatists. Selections from Lyly, Peele, Green, Lodge, Nashe, and Kyd may be found in Williams's Specimens. Morley and Oxford Treasury also contain a number of selections. Peele's The Arraignment of Paris and Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy are in Temple Dramatists.
Word Of The Day