Shakespearean Staging, 1599-1642

This unique survey of pre-Restoration staging techniques examines all the extant plays first performed by English professional actors during the years 1599–1642. T. J. King has assembled material from 276 texts, including promptbooks, printed plays with manuscript prompter’s markings, and playbooks printed from playhouse copy, in order to show how Shakespeare’s plays and those of his contemporaries were staged during this period. He finds that all texts that depend on playhouse copy could be acted with commonplace stage properties in front of such unlocalized facades as those shown in the extant pictorial evidence.