PRINTED PLAYS AND THE GREAT HALL TRADITION, 1510–1580

In Chapter I it was claimed that, of the 81 surviving printed plays from the period before 1580, at least 47 shows signs of having been originally written for performance in a great hall. This is in itself a remarkable statistic, but, if one excludes those ‘closet’ dramas obviously printed for educational or religious purposes and not intended to be played (category A, below) and those texts which survive in too fragmentary a form for their auspices to be determined (category B), then the predominance of great hall plays (category E) becomes even more evident. Of the remaining 62 playbooks published, 9 reveal no direct evidence of auspices (category C), and only 6 show clear signs of having not been designed for a hall environment. The latter were all written for outdoor performance in the context of other entertainments (category D).

A ‘CLOSET’ PLAYS

Seneca's Troas, translated by Jasper Heywood (1559), RSTC 22221; Thyestes, trans. Heywood (1560), RSTC 22226; Hercules Furens, trans. Heywood (1561), RSTC 22223; Agamemnon, trans. John Studley (?1566), RSTC 22222; Medea, trans. Studley (?1566), RSTC 22224; and Octavia, trans. ‘T. W. ’ or ‘T. N. ’ (?1566), RSTC 22229; Sophocles's The Lamentable Tragedie of Oedipus, translated by Alexander Nevyle (1563), RSTC 22225, the parallel texts of Terence's Andria, translated by Maurice Kyffin (1588), RSTC 23895, and John Palsgrave's Acolastus (1540), RSTC 11470; H. N. 's Enterlude of Myndes (?1574), RSTC 18550; Arthur Golding's translation of Theodore Beza's Tragedie of Abraham's Sacrifice (1577), RSTC 2047; and Henry Cheeke's translation of Francesco Negri de Bassano's Freewyl (1573), RSTC 18419.