From Strange's Men to Pembroke's Men: 2 Henry VI and The First part of the Contention

Abstract

McMillin, and the members of the “Acting Companies” seminar held at the 2001 annual meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America in Miami, Florida; as well as Mary Floyd-Wilson, Heather James, Molly Murray, and my colleagues Blair Hoxby, Annabel Patterson, David Quint, Claude Rawson, and Alexander Welsh. 1 Scott McMillin and Sally-Beth MacLean, The Queen’s Men and their Plays (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998), xi. In addition to McMillin and MacLean, see Roslyn Lander Knutson, The Repertory of Shakespeare’s Company 1594–1613 (Fayetteville: U of Arkansas P, 1991); J. Leeds Barroll, Politics, Plague, and Shakespeare’s Theater (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1991); Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearian Playing Companies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); and Mary Bly, Queer Virgins and Virgin Queans on the Early Modern Stage (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 2000). 2 On the “bad quartos,” see, among others, Laurie E. Maguire, Shakespearian Suspect Texts: The ‘Bad’ Quartos and their Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996); Kathleen O. Irace, Reforming the “Bad” Quartos: Performance and Provenance of Six Shakespearean First Editions (Newark: U of Delaware P, 1994); and Steven Urkowitz, “Good News about ‘Bad’ Quartos” in ‘Bad’ Shakespeare, ed. Maurice Charney (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1988), 189–206. On the history of performance practice, see David Bradley, From text to performance in the Elizabethan theatre: Preparing the play for the stage (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge UP, 1992); and T. J. King, Casting Shakespeare’s Plays: London Actors and their Roles, 1590–1642 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge UP, 1992). From Strange’s Men to Pembroke’s Men: 2 Henry VI and The First part of the Contention