Playhouses in Shakespeare’s time: why ‘play’? why ‘house’?

As York celebrates the coming of the Rose playhouse to the city, this free pre-show talk asks what ‘playhouse’ really means and how this affects our understanding of Shakespeare. The talk will have a double focus: first on the various forms of play – ‘play’ meaning ‘fun’ – that were sold within playhouses, including food, drink, books, ballads, prostitution and drama; second on the various forms of house – house meaning habitation or clan – that made up playhouses, including tap-houses, tiring-houses, necessary-houses and the actors themselves. Come and find out more about the lives of the playhouses in Shakespeare’s time before attending a performance in York’s own reconstructed playhouse, the Shakespeare Rose Theatre.

Speaker biography: Tiffany Stern is Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon (University of Birmingham). She is a distinguished scholar of performance practices in the Early Modern period. Her books include Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan (2000); Making Shakespeare (2004); [with Simon Palfrey] Shakespeare in Parts (2007; winner of the 2009 David Bevington Award for Best New Book in Early Drama Studies); Documents of Early Modern Performance (2009; winner of the 2010 David Bevington Award for Best New Book in Early Drama Studies); co-edited collection of essays with Farah Karim-Cooper, Shakespeare’s Theatres and the Effects of Performance(2013).

Register to attend Here.