London in Early Modern English Drama: Representing the Built Environment

This book examines the early modern stage's representation of London's built environment and material geography during a period in which it became the country's first metropolis, and suggests that the theatre significantly inculcates in Londoners a sense of their unique urban culture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In a time of bewilderingly rapid urban growth, the built texture of London becomes a notable dimension of much of the early modern drama that is set there. Darryll Grantley explores, among other things,the emerging sense of the iconic status of some locations, the relationship of place to character, and the growing consciousness of the importance of the metropolis and metropolitan living in the period. He also argues that the presence of London as both a setting and a frame of reference reciprocally had a determining effect on the recently emerged commercial theatre itself, helping to shape its conventions of representation.