Late Elizabethan Drama

Abstract

A predictably important development for the representation of London in English drama was the establishment of the first permanent and dedicated theatre buildings in the peripheries of the capital in the mid-1570s. The advent of the London-based commercial theatre meant that drama would fairly rapidly come to be orientated towards an urban audience, and increasingly reflect its social experience and attitudes, in a period in which that experience was in a process of change and development. Several Elizabethan playwrights came from the provinces and settled in the London conurbation, including Thomas Campion, Michael Drayton, George Ferrers, George Gascoigne, Stephen Gosson, Robert Greene, Richard Hathway, William Haughton, John Lyly, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, Henry Porter and William Shakespeare. Others were born and raised in London, such as John and Jasper Heywood, Ben Jonson, Thomas Kyd, Thomas Lodge, Anthony Munday and George Peele. Whether immigrants to the metropolis (as a large percentage of London’s population were) or native to it, these writers would all have been exposed to a dynamic and evolving urban culture that was becoming ever more self-aware as time went on.KeywordsUrban CultureUrban TypeNationalist SentimentGeographical DetailNationalist DiscourseThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.