The Shakespeare Company, 1594–1642

This is the first complete history of the theatre company, created in 1594, which in 1603 became the King’s Men. Shakespeare was at the heart of the team of players, who with their successors ran an operation that lasted until the theatres closed in 1642. During these forty-eight years they staged all of Shakespeare’s plays, a number of Ben Jonson’s, those of Thomas Middleton and John Webster, and almost all of the Beaumont and Fletcher canon. Andrew Gurr provides a comprehensive history of the company’s activities. A chapter on their finances explains the unique management system they adopted and two chapters study the fashions in their repertory and the complex relationship with their royal patrons. The six appendixes identify the 98 players who worked in the company, the 168 plays they are known to have owned and performed, as well as the key documents from the company’s history.

• A new account of the company’s early history, with fresh information about the company’s plan from the outset to use an outdoor and an indoor theatre in alternate seasons • The appendices provide an assembly of information about the players, plays and all their known performances and quotes from many vital documents, some not seen before • Illustrations include pictures of the many places where the company is known to have performed

Preface; 1. The plan of 1594; 2. The Company’s work; 3. ‘Will money buy ‘em’: Company finances; 4. ‘Workes are playes’: the public repertory; 5. Royal loyalties; 6. An afterlife; Appendix 1: The players; Appendix 2: A catalogue of quotations; Appendix 3: The sharer’s papers; Appendix 4: The repertory; Appendix 5: Surviving play-texts; Appendix 6: Performances at court.

\'Andrew Gurr\'s The Shakespeare Company 1594-1642 fills an enormous gap … an important reference work, and a book necessary for every serious scholar of theatre history, Shakespeare and Shakespeare\'s milieu.\' Around the Globe