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Of the myriad versions of face-to-faceness in Shakespeare, an elementary case is what this paper calls the “love duet.” Lawrence Manley’s contribution pursues a formal and dramaturgical route into the broader problem of Shakespeare’s ways of depicting and understanding couples by focusing on a specific instance of the love duet in the earlier work of Shakespeare. The “unchaperoned duet” is a scene or portion of a scene in which the absence of third parties is a theatrical pre-condition and a token for the absence of inhibitions to erotic face-to-face encounter. The paper also considers the impact of inhibiting factors (such as separation, absence, the presence of other characters, impinging circumstance, and erotic betrayal) on the duet. Examples are set against both early modern contexts (ancient literature, Renaissance theories of sympathy, and the development of musical duets) and modern theories, including Beckerman’s taxonomy of duets types, J. L Austin’s speech-act theory, and the clinical diagnosis of “Shared Psychotic Disorder (folie à deux)”(DSM-IV) or “delusional symptoms in partner of individual with delusional disorder” (DSM-V).

Why did severalinns within the City of London continue to function as theaters up to 1600 when there were, by 1587, at least four purpose-built theaters available to players in the nearby suburbs? Examining official attempts to regulate playing within the City as well as the economics of playing, Lawrence Manley argues in this essay that city inns were used for their greater convenience during wintertime, when early darkness and inclement weather hindered performance at the suburban theaters.

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

London has provided the setting and inspiration for a host of literary works in English, from canonical masterpieces to the popular and ephemeral. Drawing upon a variety of methods and materials, the essays in this volume explore the London of Langland and the Peasants' Rebellion, of Shakespeare and the Elizabethan stage, of Pepys and the Restoration coffee house, of Dickens and Victorian wealth and poverty, of Conrad and the Empire, of Woolf and the wartime Blitz, of Naipaul and postcolonial immigration, and of contemporary globalism. Contributions from historians, art historians, theorists and media specialists as well as leading literary scholars exemplify current approaches to genre, gender studies, book history, performance studies and urban studies. In showing how the tradition of English literature is shaped by representations of London, this volume also illuminates the relationship between the literary imagination and the society of one of the world's greatest cities.

John Wharton’s 1578 attack on the wickedness of London is written in the sweeping spirit of the Psalmist, who had seen violence and strife in the city. Day and night they go about it upon the walls thereof: mischief also and sorrow are in the midst of it. Wickedness is in the midst thereof: deceit and guile depart not from her streets. (Psalm 55: 9–11)

Scott McMillin : This collection of three papers, selected by Scott McMillin, highlights new scholarly work on the repertory of Strange's Men, Pembroke's Men, and Queen Anne's Men. Lawrence Manley : The repertory of Strange's Men, as it is represented in Henslowe's records of their 134 performances at the Rose Theatre in 1592/3, contains an unusually large number of plays involving pyrotechnics, possibly including the staging of human immolations. Though pyrotechnics were a familar feature of traditional dramaturgy, such effects were used by Strange's Men to represent acts of cruelty and judicial punishment that had an edge of topical relevance to English history and politics. The theatrical daring of pyrotechnics in the Strange's repertory may thus have been part of a 'company style' that readily accommodated the politically daring and dramatically innovative work of Marlowe in The Jew of Malta and The Massacre at Paris and of the young Shakespeare in 1 Henry VI . Roslyn Knutson : Although Pembroke's Men in 1592/3 had talented (if youthful) players and a patron in good standing with the queen, the company reportedly fell on hard times. No one knows why. Here I consider whether the problem might have been the repertory, which I explore in terms of the four plays known to be theirs ( Edward II , 1 Contention , The True Tragedy , and A Shrew ), or their touring schedule. Mark Bayer : In 1616, Queen Anne's Men, under the management of Christopher Beeston, moved theatrical operations from the Red Bull, a large public playhouse in Clerkenwell, to the Cockpit, an indoor hall on the increasingly fashionable Drury Lane. The success of this move was overshadowed by a riot on Shrove Tuesday, 1617, in which apprentices damaged the new theatre, forcing the company to return temporarily to the Red Bull while the Cockpit was under repair. Narratives of this event tend to describe it either as an indiscriminate episode of civil unrest or, more cogently, as demonstrating a specific animosity towards Queen Anne's Men because they were now playing the Red Bull repertory at a prohibitively expensive venue. In an effort to revise these received interpretations, I argue that the reasons for the riot go well beyond the release of aggression and issues of cost. The profit-driven motives of the Queen Anne's Men violated communal principles of fair dealing and their abandonment of the Red Bull and Clerkenwell affected a more intangible sense of loss and indignation, placing pressures on local businesses that relied on the daily theatre traffic, and severely weakening charitable efforts within the parish.

The calculated use of media by those in power is a phenomenon dating back at least to the seventeenth century, as Harold Weber demonstrates in this illuminating study of the relation of print culture to kingship under England's Charles II. Seventeenth-century London witnessed an enormous expansion of the print trade, and with this expansion came a revolutionary change in the relation between political authority -- especially the monarchy -- and the printed word.Weber argues that Charles' reign was characterized by a particularly fluid relationship between print and power. The press helped bring about both the deconsecration of divine monarchy and the formation of a new public sphere, but these processes did not result in the progressive decay of royal authority. Charles fashioned his own semiotics of power out of the political transformations that had turned his world upside down.By linking diverse and unusual topics -- the escape of Charles from Worcester, the royal ability to heal scrofula, the sexual escapades of the "merry monarch," and the trial and execution of Stephen College -- Weber reveals the means by which Charles took advantage of a print industry instrumental to the creation of a new dispensation of power, one in which the state dominates the individual through the supplementary relationship between signs and violence. Weber's study brings into sharp relief the conflicts involving public authority and printed discourse, social hierarchy and print culture, and authorial identity and responsibility -- conflicts that helped shape the modern state.