The dream factory London's first playhouse and the making of William Shakespeare

When the Globe Theatre opened in 1599, Shakespeare was already well-known as a playwright and poet. How did the work of the son of a Stratford glovemaker make it to the London stage? Readers will find the answer lies in Swift's fascinating and detailed history of an earlier venue, the Theatre, open from 1576 to 1598, the first purpose-built commercial playhouse in London and site of the first performances of some of Shakespeare's most beloved plays. This is where he learned his craft, working with other writers and actors while trying to make a living as a playwright. Swift drew from a variety of archival sources, including records that detailed the working lives of the men of Shakespeare's time and accounts of the various lawsuits involving the Theatre. His purpose was to look for Shakespeare the common man and how he worked with and learned from others, observing, "He was not in those years a minor deity but a labouring writer." A worthy addition to Shakespearean studies and an engaging read for theater students, aspiring playwrights, and playgoers.

Swift (The Bughouse), an English professor at Northeastern University London, spotlights the Theatre, the London playhouse that gave William Shakespeare his start, in this smart mix of history and literary criticism. After detailing the building of the Theatre by former actor James Burbage in 1576, Swift widens his lens, exploring how playhouses created tension with churches in Elizabethan London--preachers viewed them as a corrupting influence--and how the economics of livery companies, in which men typically spent seven years as an apprentice learning a trade from a master, shaped local culture, including the way playhouses worked. Swift suggests Shakespeare underwent a sort of writing apprenticeship at the Theatre, studying plays and collaborating with older, more accomplished playwrights, like George Peele. Two of Shakespeare's most well-known works, Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream, were written during his tenure at the Theatre and contain references to trades, demonstrating the centrality of livery companies at the time, Swift posits. The author's arguments don't always land--his suggestion that the actor Richard Burbage named his children after Shakespeare's characters, for instance, doesn't completely convince--but he succeeds in elucidating the economics and culture that gave rise to a literary icon. Readers will be reminded that even a writer as highly regarded as Shakespeare once needed to learn and practice his craft. (Nov.)