Das Hauptziel der Arbeit ist die Rekonstruktion der sozialen und kulturellen Rahmenbedingungen, unter denen dramatische Stücke zwischen Shakespeares Tod im Jahre 1616 und der Schließung der Theater im Jahre 1642 produziert wurden. Mithilfe einer Vielfalt zeitgenössischer Quellen erfolgt eine Rekonstruktion des historischen Kontextes aus zeitgenössischer Sicht. Die Arbeit analysiert wer die Menschen waren, für die Shakespeares Nachfolger ihre Stücke für die öffentlichen und privaten Bühnen Londons schrieben. Des Weiteren stellt die Arbeit dar, wie der Gang ins Theater in einer bisher von der Forschung nur wenig beachteten Epoche aussah und zeigt auf, wer genau in diesen Jahren ins Theater ging und wie diese Zuschauer und ihre Erwartungen an die Bühne durch eine Vielzahl externer und stetig wechselnder kultureller, politischer und sozialer Faktoren (z.B. Bärenhatzen, Prostitution, Hinrichtungen etc.) beeinflusst wurden. Zudem liegt ein weiteres Hauptaugenmerk der Arbeit darauf, wie die drei Autoren John Ford, Richard Brome und James Shirley in den Prologen und Epilogen zu ihren Stücken die Gegenwart der Zuschauer thematisiert und die Entwicklung des frühneuzeitlichen Theaters metadramatisch und selbstreflexiv angesprochen haben.

This thesis seeks to place drama of the Caroline commercial theatre in its contemporary political and legal context; particularly, it addresses the ways in which the struggle for supremacy between the royal prerogative, common law and local custom is constructed and negotiated in plays of the period. It argues that as the reign of Charles I progresses, the divine right and absolute power of the monarchy on stage begins to lose its authority, as playwrights, particularly Massinger and Brome, present a decline from divinity into the presentation of an arbitrary man who seeks to impose and increase his authority by enforcing obedience to selfish and wilful actions and demands. This decline from divinity, I argue, allows for the rise of a competing legitimate legal authority in the form of common law. Engaging with the contemporary discourse of custom, reason and law which pervades legal tracts of the period such as Coke’s Institutes and Reports and Davies’ ‘Preface Dedicatory’ to Le Primer Report des Cases & Matters en Ley resolues & adiudges en les Courts del Roy en Ireland, drama by Brome, Jonson, Massinger and Shirley presents arbitrary absolutism as madness, and adherence to customary common law as reason which restores order. In this climate, the drama suggests, royal manipulation of the law for personal ends, of which Charles I was often accused, destabilises law and legal authority. This destabilisation of legal authority is examined in a broader context in plays set in areas outwith London, geographically distant from central authority. The thesis places these plays in the context of Charles I’s attempts to centralise local law enforcement through such publications as the Book of Orders. When maintaining order in the provinces came into conflict with central legislation, the local officials exercised what Keith Wrightson describes as ‘two concepts of order’, turning a blind eye to certain activities when strict enforcement of law would create rather than dissolve local tensions. In both attempting to insist on unity between the centre and the provinces through tighter control of local officials, and dividing the centre from the provinces in the dissolution of Parliament, Charles’s government was, the plays suggest, in danger not only of destabilising and decentralising legal authority but of fragmenting it. This thesis argues that drama provides a medium whereby the politico-legal debates of the period may be presented to, and debated by, a wider audience than the more technical contemporary legal arguments, and, during Charles I’s personal rule, the theatre became a public forum for debate when Parliament was unavailable.