This edition presents a fully modernised and annotated text of Samuel Rowley’s 'When You See Me, You Know Me', first performed by Prince Henry’s Men at the Fortune playhouse c.1604. The earliest extant playtext to represent King Henry VIII as a character on the early modern stage, When You See Me dramatizes a number of key events in the Tudor king’s reign including, as per the play’s subtitle, ‘the birth and virtuous life of Edward, Prince of Wales’. The play was first printed in 1605, with subsequent editions appearing in 1613, 1621 and 1632. Despite its apparent success on the Fortune stage, however, the play has become increasingly marginalized since the mid-seventeenth century, receiving only cursory critical attention. In addition to making the text of Rowley’s play accessible to a modern readership, this edition aims to rehabilitate When You See Me as an important dramatization of the Henrician Reformation; it also seeks to draw attention to Rowley and his long and influential career in the early modern theatre. The introduction to the edition is divided into two main parts, focusing respectively on the author and the play; the latter is subdivided to include separate critical, bibliographical and editorial introductions. The Critical Introduction provides information on the play’s composition and performance history, including aspects of its performance on the Fortune stage and its position within the extant company repertory; the Bibliographical Introduction considers the play’s entrance in the Stationers’ Register and the manuscript used as printers’ copy, as well as the physical manufacture of its first edition and the text’s treatment in later and modern editions; and the Editorial Introduction provides comment on the specific methodologies employed in the production of the edition, with particular reference to the Arden Early Modern Drama editorial guidelines upon which the text is based. The appendices provide useful supplementary information, including Rowley’s likely source material; doubling charts; current locations of extant copies; bibliographical descriptions; press variants; and photographs of the copy-text.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:655728 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Howe, J. N. |
| Publisher | Bath Spa University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/6231/ |
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