1 Alan Read, Theatre & Everyday Life, An Ethics of Performance (London: Routledge, 1993), p.202.
2 Whereas a Mystery play tells a story from the Bible, a Miracle play focuses on the life of a saint. Encyclopaedia Britannica states that: ‘A miracle play presents a real or fictitious account of the life, miracles, or martyrdom of a saint.’
URL http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/384847/miracle-play accessed 16:00 Monday 6th June 2011.
3 Bans came into force in 1534 and 1543 before being lifted during the reign of Mary Tudor, but Banham asserts that ‘by 1581 Elizabeth I had achieved complete prohibition of the mystery cycles, followed by a ban (lasting for over 300 years) on all plays based on, or quoting from, the Bible.’ Martin Banham, The Cambridge Guide to Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p.179.
4 Richard Carew, The Survey of Cornwall (London: John Jaggard, 1602), British Library MS 191.c.7.
5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., p.68. 7 Ibid., p.72. 8 Read, p.202.
9 Bodleian Library, MS Bodl. 791, University of Oxford. Source located online: URL http://ww.the-camerino-players.com/medievaldrama/Bibliography_of_Cornish_ Medieval_Drama.html accessed 17:07 Monday 6th June 2011.
10 Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879 (1958)), p.1277.
11 J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner, The Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 2nd ed., vol. X: ‘Moul – Ovum’ pp.910-13. The fifth entry offers the definition ‘A stage prompter’ (obsolete) and references Carew’s Survey of 1602 as the earliest recorded usage. (p.911).
12 Ibid.
13 Archdiocese of Birmingham, Ordo for the Recitation of the Divine Office and the Celebration of Mass according to the Calendar of the Archdiocese of Birmingham for the Year 2011 (Birmingham: John F. Neale Publishing, 2011), pp.2 – 11.
14 See also Adrian Fortescue, J.B. O’Connell & Alcuin Read, The Ceremonies of the Roman Rite Described (London: Burns & Oates, 2009), Fifteenth Revised Edition, pp. 62 – 90.
15 A. M. Nagler, A Source Book in Theatrical History (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1952), p.49.
16 The Canon Law Society of America (James A. Coriden, Thomas J. Green and Donald E. Heintschel, ed.s), The Code of Canon Law, A Text and Commentary (London: Cassell Ltd., 1985), p.95.
17 Philip Butterworth, ‘Book-Carriers: Medieval and Tudor Staging Conventions’, Theatre Notebook, 46, No. 1 (1992), p.26.
18 Ibid.
19 Marvin Carlson, ‘Theatre Audiences and the Reading of Performance’ in Interpreting the Theatrical Past: Essays in the Historiography of Performance, ed. by Thomas Postlewait and Bruce McConachie (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000), p.82.
20 Vsevolod Meyerhold, Meyerhold on Theatre, translated and edited by Edward Braun (London: Methuen, 1969), pp.99 – 100.
21 Philip Butterworth, ‘Book-Carriers: Medieval and Tudor Staging Conventions’,p.26. 22 Andrew Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London,3rd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004), p.11 after Janet S. Loengard, ‘An Elizabethan Lawsuit: John Brayne, his Carpenter, and the building of the Red Lion Theatre’, Shakespeare Quarterly 35 (1984), pp.298 – 310.
23 Siobhan Keenan, Travelling Players in Shakespeare’s England (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002), pp.4 – 7.
24 J. R. Stephens, ‘Censorship’ in The Cambridge Guide to Theatre, 3rd edn, ed. by Michael Banham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p.179.
25 Tiffany Stern, Documents of Performance in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p.38.
26 Ibid., pp.38 – 9.
27 Glynne Wickham, ‘Documents of control, 1530-1660’, in Theatre in Europe: a documentary history, 5 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), English Professional Theatre, 1530 – 1660 ed. by Glynne Wickham, Herbert Berry and William Ingram, pg 32and Malone Society Collections vol xiii: Jacobean & Caroline Revels Accounts 1603 – 1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986) ed. by W.R.Streitberger, p.ix.
28 Stern, Documents of Performance p.38.
29 Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage 1574 – 1642, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p.117.
30 E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage volume IV, p. 269, cited in Gurr, Shakespearean Stage p.7.
31 Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London, p.11. 32 Keenan, p.7.
33 Gurr, Shakespearean Stage,p.31.
34 Scott McMillin and Sally-Beth MacLean, The Queen’s Men and their Plays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p.5.
35 Gurr, Shakesperean Stage p.31. See also McMillin & MacLean, p.xiii.
36 Ibid.,p.30.
38 As follows:
That they hold them content with playeing in private houses at weddings etc without publike assemblies.
If more be thought good to be tolerated: that then they be restrained to the orders in the act of common Counsell tempore Hawes.
That they play not openly till the whole [plague] death in London have been by xx daies under 50 a weke, nor longer than it shal so continue.
That no playes be on the sabbat.
That no playeing be on holydaies but after evening prayer: nor any received into the auditorie till after evening prayer.
That no playeing be in the dark, nor continue any such time but as any of the auditorie may returne to their dwellings in London before sonne set, or at least before it be dark.
That the Quenes players only be tolerated, and of them their number and certaine names to be notified in your Lordships lettres to the L. Maior and to the Justices of Middlesex and Surrey. And those her players not to divide themselves into several companies.
That for breaking any of the orders, their toleration cesse. (Ibid.) 39 Ibid.,p. 29.
40 David Bradley, From Text to Performance in the Elizabethan Theatre: preparing the play for the stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp.61 - 63. 41 Keenan, pp.15 – 16.
42 Cited in Keenan, p. 15. 43 Ibid.,pp.15 – 16.
44 The book keeper would frequently allocate minor supporting roles and also crowd roles, either to hirelings engaged to perform or from within his own staff of stage keepers. See Gurr, Shakespearean Stage p.209.
45 See Andrew Gurr, ‘A New Theatre Historicism’ in From Script to Stage in Early Modern England, ed. by Peter Holland & Stephen Orgel (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p.76.
46 W. R. Streitberger, Malone Society Collections vol xiii: Jacobean & Caroline Revels Accounts 1603 – 1642 (Oxford: The Malone Society, 1986), p.ix.
47 Glynne Wickham, ‘Part one, documents of control, 1530-1660’ in Theatre in Europe: a documentary history, 5 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), English Professional Theatre, 1530-1660, ed. by Glynne Wickham, Herbert Berry and William Ingram, pp. 6-7.
48 Gurr, Shakespearean Stage, pp.103 - 4. 49 Ibid.,p.103.
50 Tiffany Stern, Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp.49 – 52.
51 For further discussion of the nature of such closed performances as ‘rehearsals’, see Stern, Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan, p.49.
52 Ibid.,pp.76 - 9.
53 Thomas Haywood, The Captives (British Library, MS Egerton 1994) folio 70 recto. 54 William Shakespeare, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ taken from The Illustrated
Stratford Shakespeare (London: Chancellor Press, 1991), p.172.
55 Quince: Why, you must not speak that yet; that you answer to Pyramus. You speak all your part at once, cues and all. – Pyramus, enter: your cue is past, it is, “never tire.” (Ibid., p.177.)
56 Moth: “A holy parcel of the fairest dames[the Ladies turn their backs to him] That ever turn’d their – backs – to mortal views!”
Biron: “Their eyes,” villain, “their eyes.”
Moth: “That ever turn’d their eyes to mortal views. Out –”
Boyet: True; “out” indeed.
Moth: “Out of your favours, heavenly spirits, vouchsafe
Not to behold –”
Biron: “Once to behold,” rogue.
Moth: “Once to behold with your sun-beamed eyes . . . ” William Shakespeare, ‘Love’s Labours Lost’, Ibid., p.162.
57 Peter Thomson, Shakespeare’s Theatre (London: Routledge, 1992), 2nd edn., p.59. Thomson points out that the sustained policy of delivering such extensive repertories renders ‘unquestionable damage to the notion of “polished performances” in the Elizabethan public theatres’ yet astutely remarks that ‘a professional company does not regularly undertake the impossible’ with reference to the soaring numbers of plays offered by such companies and asserts that ‘We must assume [. . .] that Elizabethan actors had a fine memory for lines, whilst being prepared to admit, despite the surprising lack of evidence, that a system of prompting was well established.’ (p.59) Gurr maintains that the ‘prompter’ was not the same person as the ‘book-keeper’, although in the circumstances under which the plays were rehearsed and fed into the repertory it is hard to imagine anyone other than the book- keeper, apart from perhaps the playwright himself, being in a position to acquire the requisite knowledge of the text and its delivery in order to prompt effectively. Thomson continues: ‘We do not [. . .] know where the prompter was positioned [. . .] but no company could stage ten plays in a fortnight without a reliable system of prompting.’ It is difficult to disagree with this argument when the conditions, circumstances, and logistics of delivering the repertory are fully considered.
58 Stern, Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan p.78.
59 From the Prologue to Romeo and Juliet.
60 Stern, Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan p.78. 61 Gurr, Shakespearean Stage p.32.
62 The Catholic Encyclopædia: an international work of reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline, and history of the Catholic Church, ed. by Charles G. Herbermann and others, 15 vols (London and New York: The Robert Appleton Company, 1912), vol. xv, pp. 381 – 384.