Before The Rose: Marlowe at The Curtain
DR CALLAN DAVIES
University of Southampton
Where was Christopher Marlowe as The Rose Playhouse was being built? And what was he doing?
Marlowe’s plays are readily and rightly associated with the heyday of The Rose – but before its construction, and for some time after, he was living and working on the other side of the river, up in Shoreditch, where the Admiral’s Men were performing close by in the moments leading up to the playwright’s debut play, Tamburlaine.
Join Dr Callan Davies as he takes you back to the years around 1587, when Marlowe is living a stone’s throw from The Curtain Playhouse. His ‘mighty lines’ take shape in its shadow and, perhaps, within its large, rectangular perimeter – a space with very different theatrical architecture to Philip Henslowe’s Rose.
Discover how reimagining part of Marlowe’s canon at or around The Curtain creates a longer, richer spatial history for The Rose’s repertory, and learn how, by drawing connections between 16th-century London playing venues, it is possible to appreciate the fluidity and adaptability of the commercial plays they hosted in a new way.
Callan Davies is Lecturer in Seventeenth-Century Literature and Culture at the University of Southampton. His latest book, What is a Playhouse? England at Play, 1520-1620, featured as one of History Today’s Books of the Year 2023, and his first monograph, Strangeness in Jacobean Drama, was shortlisted for the Shakespeare’s Globe Book Award 2023. He has written widely on early modern literary, cultural, and theatre history, including the new introduction for the Oxford World’s Classics The Merry Wives of Windsor and as part of the Before Shakespeare, Box Office Bears, and Middling Culture UKRI-funded projects. He is currently writing a trade book for Yale titled The Curtain: The Story of a Shakespearean Playhouse, to be published next year.
University of Southampton
Where was Christopher Marlowe as The Rose Playhouse was being built? And what was he doing?
Marlowe’s plays are readily and rightly associated with the heyday of The Rose – but before its construction, and for some time after, he was living and working on the other side of the river, up in Shoreditch, where the Admiral’s Men were performing close by in the moments leading up to the playwright’s debut play, Tamburlaine.
Join Dr Callan Davies as he takes you back to the years around 1587, when Marlowe is living a stone’s throw from The Curtain Playhouse. His ‘mighty lines’ take shape in its shadow and, perhaps, within its large, rectangular perimeter – a space with very different theatrical architecture to Philip Henslowe’s Rose.
Discover how reimagining part of Marlowe’s canon at or around The Curtain creates a longer, richer spatial history for The Rose’s repertory, and learn how, by drawing connections between 16th-century London playing venues, it is possible to appreciate the fluidity and adaptability of the commercial plays they hosted in a new way.
Callan Davies is Lecturer in Seventeenth-Century Literature and Culture at the University of Southampton. His latest book, What is a Playhouse? England at Play, 1520-1620, featured as one of History Today’s Books of the Year 2023, and his first monograph, Strangeness in Jacobean Drama, was shortlisted for the Shakespeare’s Globe Book Award 2023. He has written widely on early modern literary, cultural, and theatre history, including the new introduction for the Oxford World’s Classics The Merry Wives of Windsor and as part of the Before Shakespeare, Box Office Bears, and Middling Culture UKRI-funded projects. He is currently writing a trade book for Yale titled The Curtain: The Story of a Shakespearean Playhouse, to be published next year.
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Before The Rose: Marlowe at The Curtain
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