Textual Patronage in English Drama, 1570-1640

Bibliographic Data

ID9397486
AuthorsDavid M Bergeron, David Μ Bergeron (corresponding author)
Year2017
Publication date2017-11-28
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueTextual Patronage in English Drama, 1570-1640 (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.4324/9781351148047
OpenAlexW1595314466
Open LibraryOL38317546M
ISBN9781351148047
LanguageEN
Citations received4

Through an investigation of the dedications and addresses from various printed plays of the English Renaissance, the author recuperates the richness of these prefaces and connects them to the practice of patronage. The prefatory matter discussed ranges from the printer John Day's address to readers (the first of its kind) in the 1570 edition of Gorboduc to Richard Brome's dedication to William Seymour and address to readers in his 1640 play, Antipodes. The study includes discussion of prefaces in plays by Shakespeare's contemporaries as well as Shakespeare himself, among them Marston, Jonson, and Heywood. The author uses these prefaces to show that English playwrights, printers and publishers looked in two directions, toward aristocrats and toward a reading public, in order to secure status for and dissemination of dramatic texts. The author points out that dedications and addresses to readers constitute obvious signs that printers, publishers and playwrights in the period increasingly saw these dramatic texts as occupying a rightful place in the humanistic and commercial endeavor of book production

Art · Drama · Literature · History · Irish and British Studies · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Philippine History and Culture · 1500-1600 · 17th century · Authors and patrons · Dedications · Early modern and Elizabethan · English drama · English drama, early modern and elizabethan · English drama, history and criticism · English drama, history and criticism, early modern and elizabethan · English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh · History and criticism · Literary patrons · Publishing

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