The Resonables of Boroughside, Southwark: an Elizabethan black family near the Rose Theatre

Abstract

This article focuses on the archival records of a black family in Boroughside, Southwark and St. Olave, Tooley Street between 1579 and 1592. Given the proximity of this precinct, immediately adjacent to Southwark with its busy theatrical connections, including the appearance in it of Phillip Henslowe's Rose Theatre in 1587 and Shakespeare's own residence close by, this article will argue that the history of this man called Resonable and his family casts an intriguing new light on the material conditions of the production of Elizabethan drama including that of Shakespeare. The article will pursue two objectives: it will sketch a history of this black family in its locale of residence, and it will construct some lines of contact between this palpable black presence right next to the venue of Elizabethan drama's and Shakespeare's earliest and most influential plays, in the most formative years of both. In pursuing the first objective, the article will demonstrate the methodology of empirical black studies in the early modern period, and in prosecuting the second it will show the value of such studies in understanding further the vexatious topic of the black subject in Shakespeare and popular early theatre.