Early Modern Drama on the Page and Stage

Many books and university courses, trying to compensate for a history of the neglect or mistrust of plays as performance, use the phrase ‘from page to stage’ to think about the dramatic possibilities of their texts. In fact, for the early modern theatre, the phrase needs to be the other way around – from stage to page. Plays were performances first, and only later, and then only sometimes, books. This section of Great Writers gathers resources – podcasts, ebooks, websites – to explore the two interconnected lives of the early modern play – as an event in time and space on the stage of the Globe or Blackfriars theatre, and as a material printed object, on sale to Elizabethan and Jacobean readers in the booksellers’ quarter around St Paul’s Churchyard. Read more