Shakespeare, the Queen’s Men, and the Elizabethan Performance of History (review)

Shakespeare, the Queen’s Men, and the Elizabethan Performance of History is a stimulating and thoughtful exploration of perhaps the most topical genre of later Elizabethan drama, the history play, and the evolution of historical consciousness in the period. Although the author has published several articles in recent years on the subject, this book allows him greater scope to present the wider intellectual context for his focused analysis of several representative plays from the repertory of the Queen’s Men and the emerging master of the tradition, Shakespeare. Informed by modern performance theory, Brian Walsh’s goals are essentially twofold: first, by examining influential history plays produced during the 1580s and ’90s, to reveal the ways in which they knowingly combine historical representation with self-conscious awareness of theatrical artifice and the transience of live performance; and second, to point out the positive dimension of such transience, the stimulus that could inspire further imaginative engagement with the past and its artifacts. Even while reflecting on the inescapable limitations of our knowledge of these ghosts from our theatrical past—both the players and their audiences—he makes a case for hypothesizing “with as much rigor as possible, a range of potential audience responses to the traces of performance that lurk within” his chosen texts, which are as close as anyone can come to their actual early modern stage performance (7).

The first chapter, “Dialogues with the Dead,” situates the detailed analysis of plays to come with a three-part overview of the evolution of Elizabethan historical culture; an accessible interpretation of the broader cultural role of early modern theater viewed through the lens of performance theory; and a summary of relevant performance practices of the Queen’s Men and Shakespeare’s playing companies. What is missing here is a nuanced explanation of the author’s assumptions about the early modern audiences for whom these players performed: can a unified reception really be imagined? Would playgoers at a provincial guildhall performance of Henry V respond in the same way as a diverse London audience or a more privileged audience in a private residence or at court? Despite this oversight, “Dialogues with the Dead” is an articulate introduction to Walsh’s interpretive viewpoint, with a sensitive evocation of the yearning for a historical past that characterized an era still coming to terms with the disruptions of the Reformation, the consequent alteration of its landscape, and major demographic, social, and economic changes. His identification of the theater’s potent role in imaginative engagement with the past through the performance of history contributes a fresh perspective for the reading of the familiar plays of 1 Henry VI, Richard III, Henry V, and their less-familiar precursors from the Queen’s Men repertory, The Famous Victories of Henry V and The True Tragedy of Richard III. If we think first of the playwrights’ possible intentions, we can appreciate this insight: “Shakespeare and others harnessed the potential of dramaturgy and dramatic poetry to respond to widespread feelings of historical loss with the power of aesthetic experience: an experience that revels in imaginative gestures toward a past that is always out of reach but that promises the possibility that such enjoyable experiences can be continually recreated through the collective will to have a past” (13).

In particular, those familiar only with Shakespeare’s history plays should welcome Walsh’s introduction to the performance practices of the Queen’s Men playing company (the all-stars of the 1580s) and his close analysis in chapters 2 and 3 of two of their most influential plays. Not only were they innovators in the history play genre, the Queen’s Men also knew how to engage an audience, inspired in part by the presence of talented clowns like Richard Tarlton, irrepressible and adept at improvisation. The conscious desire to involve audiences in the collective process of live performance was part of their purpose, leading Walsh to conclude that...