Ep 176: Leicester's Men with Laurie Johnson

08/30/21 • 35 min

Leicester’s Men are a group of actors who formed what many consider to be the founding company of English Renaissance Theater. Established with the sponsorship of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the playing company travelled around England and abroad performing plays with the legal protection of being in the Earls’ service. The company was unique for its’ time in that they separated themselves from the traditional income model of playing companies, choosing instead to operate as an independent entity where they could generate their own income instead of getting paid by their sponsor. By 1574, five men including James Burbage, John Perkin, John Laneham, William Johnson, and Robert Wilson would be listed on a royal patent for Leicester’s Men, making their playing company the first to receive an official royal patent and, in so doing, giving these men the freedom to create what we know today as English Renaissance Theater. Playing companies, including Shakespeare’s company the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, would go on to follow the model of Leicester’s Men well into the late 16 and early 17th centuries.

Here today to tell us the story of Leicester’s Men and the groundwork they built for future playwrights like William Shakespeare is our guest, Laurie Johnson.

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Here today to tell us the story of Leicester’s Men and the groundwork they built for future playwrights like William Shakespeare is our guest, Laurie Johnson.

Get bonus episodes on Patreon

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

Ep 175: The King's Men with Lucy Munro

In 1603, as King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England following the death of Elizabeth I, one of the people James’ tapped to walk in his coronation parade was William Shakespeare, along with the entire Lord Chamberlain’s Men company who received the official patronage of James I to become the King’s Men. The new title and status brought big changes to the performance of plays, the subject matter selected for play writing, and gave William Shakespeare the position in society he had long sought after. Our guest this week, Lucy Munro, is here to share her research into the King’s Men and what the shift from Elizabethan into Jacobean England brought about for Shakespeare. Get bonus episodes on Patreon

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Next Episode

Ep 177: Shorthand with Kelly McCay

When William Shakespeare was just 24 years old, a man named Timothy Bright would introduce a system of writing called charactery to England, setting off a wildfire of shorthand manuals, methods, and training where people flocked to learn this new, symbol based, system of writing that allowed the spoken word to be captured verbatim in real time. Notes and letters from philosophers and travellers in the late 16th and early 17th centuries remark that the fascination and mastery of shorthand was a skill seen internationally as uniquely English. The skill was so popular in England that it would even travel across the Atlantic with the British Colonists and find a place in the foundation of the New World, with the system of tachygraphy (created in 1626) being used by American President Thomas Jefferson in the 18th century. While many of the surviving copies of shorthand we have today exist on ink and paper, we have extant records that indicate shorthand was also useful on wax tablets, writing tables, and even with the graphite pencil. Since these alternate writing materials are designed to be temporary, their existence is something we only know about today from references we find in writings like early modern plays, including Shakespeare’s two references to “charactery” in Julius Caesar and Merry Wives of Windsor. Here today to help us explore the evolution of charactery from new fangled idea to valuable career over the course of Shakespeare’s lifetime is our guest and author of ““All the World Writes Short Hand” , Kelly McCay. Get bonus episodes on Patreon

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