Shakespeare's Birthday Lecture: "The Baddest Neighbourhood: Players and Puritans on Bankside"

Professor Enno Ruge, Ludwig-Maximilien University, Munich, will deliver a presentation called "The Baddest Neighbourhood: Players and Puritans on Bankside." He writes: "My talk aims at a revision of prevailing assumptions about the cultural topography of London as an early modern theatrical city. Contrary to accepted notions, it proceeds on the premise that there was no distinct cultural dichotomy between the city and the suburbs. Focussing on the transpontine suburbs on the south bank of the Thames, it argues that the disreputable liberties, where some of the best-known playhouses could be found, were more heterogeneous and less marginal than is usually assumed. Instead, the suburbs are seen as a contested space where the coexistence of puritans and theatres was constitutive for the unique London theatre scene in the early modern period, since puritans and dramatists alike claimed authority as censurers of the social and moral conditions in the rapidly changing capital. Finally, several scenes from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night are discussed as examples of how the commercial theatre based in the suburbs theatricalised its urban environment."