Date and Performance
The date of the play is not known with certainty, and its early performance history is largely a blank. The title page of the 1638 quarto states that the work was "sundry times acted at the Red Bull and other theaters, with general and good applause." Okes' dedication of the play to the guild of shoemakers also mentions the play's popularity, and states that "some twenty years agone, it was in the fashion." This suggests a date c. 1618 for the play's origin, though the "twenty years" figure could be only an approximation. Commentators have suggested dates of authorship as early as c. 1608.
The comic subplot of the play was extracted and performed as a "droll," and was often staged at Bartholomew Fair and Southwark Fair during the middle and later decades of the seventeenth century. The play was revived at least once during the Restoration era.
Read more about this topic: A Shoemaker A Gentleman
Famous quotes containing the words date and, date and/or performance:
“We, when we sow the seeds of doubt deeper than the most up-to- date and modish free-thought has ever dreamed of doing, we well know what we are about. Only out of radical skepsis, out of moral chaos, can the Absolute spring, the anointed Terror of which the time has need.”
—Thomas Mann (18751955)
“Modern tourist guides have helped raised tourist expectations. And they have provided the nativesfrom Kaiser Wilhelm down to the villagers of Chichacestenangowith a detailed and itemized list of what is expected of them and when. These are the up-to- date scripts for actors on the tourists stage.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“There are people who think that wrestling is an ignoble sport. Wrestling is not sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of suffering than a performance of the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque.”
—Roland Barthes (19151980)