The Elizabethan Country House Entertainment

Print, Performance and Gender

Elizabeth Zeman Kolkovich

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781107134256
• eBook ISBN:
  9781316713303
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This is the first full-length critical study of country house entertainment, a genre central to late Elizabethan politics. It shows how the short plays staged for the Queen at country estates like Kenilworth Castle and Elvetham shaped literary trends and intervened in political debates, including whether women made good politicians and what roles the church and local culture should play in definitions of England. In performance and print, country house entertainments facilitated political negotiations, rethought gender roles, and crafted regional and national identities. In its investigation of how the hosts used performances to negotiate local and national politics, the book also sheds light on how and why such entertainments enabled female performance and authorship at a time when English women did not write or perform commercial plays. Written in a lively and accessible style, this is fascinating reading for scholars and students of early modern literature, theatre, and women's history.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Note on Transcription and Citation
• Introduction
• Part I Performance
• Part II Print
• Epilogue: The Genre's Afterlives in Stuart England
• Appendix 1 Elizabethan Country House Entertainments
• Appendix 2 English Translation of Theobalds (1571): "Congratulatory Poem of the House of Cecil on the Arrival of the Fairest Queen 22 September 1571"
• Index