Shakespeare among others
Martin Wiggins has studied every play, masque, or interlude performed or published in the British Isles or by British writers, from the first secular dramas to the closing of the theaters. (What the Reformation gave, it took away.) All of it. The whole corpus. He's cataloged it all in his magisterial British Drama 1533-1642, "an enumerative, descriptive, and analytical catalogue of identifiable dramatic works, both extant and lost, written by English, Welsh, Irish, and Scottish authors, in all languages, during the 110 years between 1 January 1533 and 31 December 1642." He's noted their languages (English, Latin, Greek, Welsh, Cornish), their metrics (from iambic senarius with "one passage of adonics" to skeltonics and poulter's measure), their sources, settings, performances, parts and doubling of parts, known actors, extras ("a group of morris-dancing SHOEMAKERS (sc. 11; speak collectively)"), and every known penny expended, including late-night water taxis.
I admire the hell out of him.
This means that Wiggins can see the whole evolution of early modern drama in the British Isles: genres unfolding, dramatic rivialries and emulations, fads and false promises. John Webster's adaptation of John Marston's The Malcontent (written for the Children of Blackfriars in 1602-1603): "was followed by a prodigious run of dark comedies using its central plot devices of disguised dukes, political displacement, and averted murder; these included Middleton's The Phoenix, John Day's Law-Tricks (1604), and of course Measure for Measure." It's dizzying to see the landscape from the air.
The Oxford University Press is now up to volume six of ten. I wish they'd hurry up with the online datadase, because whoa.
A lot of recent scholarship has been on Shakespeare among others, a part of a collaborative venture.
Anyway, the BBC has posted Wiggins's useful graph of Who Wrote What in the Shakespeare canon. Aside from Sir Thomas More (a special case because that's almost certainly his holograph), this doesn't include his occasional play-doctoring: a scene or two for The Spanish Tragedy, and what not. What's awesome is that they've got clips of actors doing both Shakespeare's and Fletcher's bits of Two Noble Kinsmen and All Is True. Which twin has the Toni? Don't peek!
Nine
I admire the hell out of him.
This means that Wiggins can see the whole evolution of early modern drama in the British Isles: genres unfolding, dramatic rivialries and emulations, fads and false promises. John Webster's adaptation of John Marston's The Malcontent (written for the Children of Blackfriars in 1602-1603): "was followed by a prodigious run of dark comedies using its central plot devices of disguised dukes, political displacement, and averted murder; these included Middleton's The Phoenix, John Day's Law-Tricks (1604), and of course Measure for Measure." It's dizzying to see the landscape from the air.
The Oxford University Press is now up to volume six of ten. I wish they'd hurry up with the online datadase, because whoa.
A lot of recent scholarship has been on Shakespeare among others, a part of a collaborative venture.
Anyway, the BBC has posted Wiggins's useful graph of Who Wrote What in the Shakespeare canon. Aside from Sir Thomas More (a special case because that's almost certainly his holograph), this doesn't include his occasional play-doctoring: a scene or two for The Spanish Tragedy, and what not. What's awesome is that they've got clips of actors doing both Shakespeare's and Fletcher's bits of Two Noble Kinsmen and All Is True. Which twin has the Toni? Don't peek!
Nine