Recent criticism has cast the suburban playhouses of Early Modern London as marginalised institutions, in at least a topographic if not a symbolic sense. This thesis will contend that marginality is a relative term, and that for the inhabitants of the suburb, of Clerkenwell, the salient social function of the Red Bull theatre was not to serve the City as a site for licence, but to provide a neighbourhood space in which bonds of community could be formed. Arguing that theatres were built in particular locations not just to escape City prohibitions, but to draw on proximate audiences, I provide a brief history of Clerkenwell and place the Red Bull in its local context. By figuring the Red Bull, both in terms of its standard repertoire and its audience, as a prototypical "community theatre," I develop a sociology of dramatic production which understands this Early Modern theatre as a crucial nexus of local solidarity.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.27965 |
| Date | January 1997 |
| Creators | Richards, Keith Owen. |
| Contributors | Bristol, Michael D. (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of English.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001618326, proquestno: MQ37230, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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