Description
Temporarily out of stock
Title: Dream Factory, The: London’s First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare
Author: SWIFT DANIEL
Format: HARDCOVER
Publication date: 22/04/2025
Imprint: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Price: $51.95
Publishing status: NOT YET PUBLISHED
The remarkable untold story of Shakespeare’s first theatre – the playhouse before the Globe
In 1576, in a muddy field in Shoreditch, James Burbage erected London’s first purpose-built commercial playhouse. A place of high culture and quick profit, run by cunning dreamers, the Theatre for the first time offered London’s players the chance to control what they staged. At a time when playgoing was held to be close to a sin, this entertainment factory was a flashpoint for controversy – but would also become Shakespeare’s first theatre, where he learned to ply his trade before his company moved to the Globe.
Through the life of this little-known playhouse, Daniel Swift tells the story of how Shakespeare became Shakespeare, and the Elizabethan stage began to flourish. Introducing us to the businessmen who dreamed up the Theatre, the carpenters who built it, the preachers who hated it, and the actors who performed upon its small stage, The Dream Factory recreates the world that produced Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream – and the audiences who first saw them.
ISBN: 9780300263541
Dimension: 216mm X 156mm
Pages: 320