The Earls of Derby and the Early Modern Performance Culture of North-West England

Abstract

The Earls of Derby and the Early Modern Performance Culture of North-West England Elspeth Graham This issue of Shakespeare Bulletin is concerned with the 3rd to 7th Earls of Derby, their patronage roles, and other involvements in performance cultures in the early modern period. This forms one central strand of research into the early modern theatrical history of the small town of Prescot (now in Liverpool City Region's Borough of Knowsley; formerly in south Lancashire). It is this history, and the connections between Knowsley and Shakespearean theatre which it evidences, that inform the current Shakespeare North Playhouse Project, a major, heritage-based, urban regeneration initiative that has been developing for over a decade and which is now coming to fruition. The project commemorates Knowsley's early modern theatrical heritage by building the Shakespeare North Playhouse, a replica of Inigo Jones's/John Webbs's Cockpit-in-Court theatre enclosed in a modern wraparound building housing community and education activities, and surrounded by a performance garden. Construction of the Playhouse began in 2019 and it will open in 2022 with a program of retained and associated companies performing both Shakespeare's plays and other forms of drama in the Cockpit-in-Court theatre, as well as educational programs based in the surrounding modern building but extending into the wider community and its schools, colleges, and universities. The project overall takes its impetus from knowledge of the littlerecognized—and perhaps surprising—level of Knowsley's Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatic activity and interests. Retrieval of historical understanding of theatrical activity in Knowsley has, over recent decades, revealed two centrally-intertwined stories. There is, firstly, that of the Lancashire-based Earls of Derby: courtiers, local magnates and theatrical patrons, one of whose major residences, Knowsley Hall, bordered the [End Page 311] town of Prescot (as it still does today, as the Merseyside home of the 19th Earl and Countess of Derby). Then, secondly, there is the history of the "play howse," "lusorium," or "theatrum" in Prescot itself—the earliest known Elizabethan, purpose-built playhouse outside London. The intersection of these two narrative strands also brings north west England, as a specific regional locality, into dialogue with the royal courts of the period and London as England's burgeoning metropolis, embodying national concerns and cultures. A similar dialogue between region and metropolis also relates to our contemporary world and the Shakespeare North project. While the significance of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Earls of Derby, for whom dramatic patronage was, as Sally-Beth MacLean has put it, "a family tradition," has been relatively well established in the past, recent research has enriched, extended, and reconfigured perception of their roles (MacLean, "Family"; Manley and MacLean). Such research informs the articles included in this issue. The story of the Prescot playhouse is perhaps less generally-recognized than that of the Earls of Derby. But it has been known since the 1950s, when the local historian, F. A. Bailey, brought its existence to light, that a purpose-built theatre existed from the 1590s to the early 1600s in the small (both today and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) town of Prescot (Bailey, "Playhouse"). While David George, both in his work as editor of the Lancashire volume of Records of Early English Drama, and in a separate essay, has directly considered the significance of this early theatre, and others have mentioned the Prescot playhouse in passing, little dedicated research into its existence, other than that related to the Shakespeare North project, has been published (REED. Lancashire; George, "Playhouse"; Graham and Tyler). Knowledge of the existence of this Prescot playhouse derives largely from town records: the Prescot Court Leet records; the accounts of its Grammar School; and some miscellaneous letters and notes. And, since a particular feature of Prescot's history was (and still is) its relationship to King's College, Cambridge—as the town's advowson was held by the College—further information is found in its archives. (Henry VI had gifted the Manor and Rectory of Prescot to King's College as part of its endowment in 1447, so that the town was under the College's governance and paid rents to it both in...