Here is where you get to read all about what your professor does when she is not grading papers, preparing lectures, dusting, usw.
Theater economics:
This is my dissertation, shortly to be published as a book by University of Delaware Press. It's just what the title suggests it is; a history of the Chamberlain's/King's Men, aka "Shakespeare's" theatrical company, as a business. A portion of it was published as "The Globe and Henry V as business document," SEL Spring 2000.
FAQ:
Q: Why isn't the title "An institutional economic history of Shakespeare's company and its texts"?
A: Because I want to clarify that the plays belonged to the company, not to the author. That was the economic reality. Also, it's very difficult to determine which theatrical decisions were Shakespeare's, which were Richard Burbage's, which were William Kempe's, etc. My title implies that since the completed text was produced corporately, it doesn't matter.
Q: Why's it called "Global Economics"?
A: My little joke--the company's theater was called the Globe. For a virtual tour of the "modern" Globe theater, click here.
Q: Why look at the company as a business?
A: There's a growing trend in Shakespeare studies to look at economic issues. The Early Modern period was a time of great economic change and growth. Inventions of this time include the Bank, the joint stock corporation, and a credit economy.
Also, as a former stage manager, I'm very interested in the production details of theater. So I tend to fixate on things like "why are there suddenly a whole lot of plays with bears in them in 1611?"
Women, actresses, technology and the theater business:
These papers are part of a much larger project on various royal women, the theater business, and theater technology. I think it's interesting that the people who introduce the new Italian perspective theater technology are largely queens--Catherine de' Medici brought it to France, Anne of Denmark and Henrietta Maria of France were Inigo Jones's major patrons, etc. Since the new technology seems to go hand in hand with the growing importance of actresses (and female playwrights and producers), I thought it was worth investigating.
Other Research
In 2002 I turned out six biographical articles for a collection called Absolutism and the Scientific Revolution (Greenwood Press). Three of the articles were on the Chamberlain's/King's Men's house playwrights--William Shakespeare, John Fletcher, Philip Massinger. Two of the others were on Royalist/Cavalier poets, Thomas Carew and Robert Herrick; and the last article was on the scene designer and architect Inigo Jones. I've also contributed to the Compendium of Renaissance Drama.
I've written a few book reviews on theatre history books for Essays in Theatre and The Shakespeare Newsletter.
I do a lot of work with hypertext technology and its implications, some of it theoretical and some of it practical.
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