The Earl of Leicester’s Men were the dominant adult playing company of the early Elizabethan stage before the Queen’s Men. In addition to being the leading court revels company for nearly two decades, Leicester’s Men were also responsible for mapping out the touring circuits used by later companies and for establishing the first major playhouses near London. This book details the history of this company, building on decades of established scholarship, while also offering a raft of new discoveries from primary sources. Parish records help to unlock the origins of the company within London, and this background is shown to inform the company’s responses to the circumstances that having one of the most powerful nobles of the era as a patron presented. Their stable familial and parochial networks enabled them to tour extensively while also expanding their theatrical capital closer to London. This capital allowed them to thrive as court performers and as innovators of the playhouse business.

The Earl of Leicester’s Men were the dominant adult playing company of the early Elizabethan stage before the Queen’s Men. In addition to being the leading court revels company for nearly two decades, Leicester’s Men were also responsible for mapping out the touring circuits used by later companies and for establishing the first major playhouses near London. This book details the history of this company, building on decades of established scholarship, while also offering a raft of new discoveries from primary sources. Parish records help to unlock the origins of the company within London, and this background is shown to inform the company’s responses to the circumstances that having one of the most powerful nobles of the era as a patron presented. Their stable familial and parochial networks enabled them to tour extensively while also expanding their theatrical capital closer to London. This capital allowed them to thrive as court performers and as innovators of the playhouse business.

The introduction to Playing and Playgoing: Actor, Audience and Performance in Early Modern England argues that the study of theatrical culture is crucial to the scholarly investigation of dramatic texts: not merely of historical interest, but necessary for a full understanding of the plays themselves. Playing and Playgoing works with and reflects on approaches drawn from literary scholarship, theatre history, and performance studies, in seeking to advance the critical conversation on the interactions between: play-texts; performance spaces; the bodily, sensory and material experiences of the playhouse; and playgoers’ responses to, and engagements with, the theatre. This introduction explores three textual and archival examples that suggest the significance of the player-playgoer relationship at the heart of this book – and in so doing, it sets up the questions raised by this volume, and the shared interests that operate across the range of approaches these chapters offer.