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In a theatre which self-consciously cultivated its audiences’ imagination, how and what did playgoers ‘see’ on the stage? This book reconstructs one aspect of that imaginative process. It considers a range of printed and documentary evidence - the majority previously unpublished - for the way ordinary individuals thought about their houses and households. It then explores how writers of domestic tragedies engaged those attitudes to shape their representations of domesticity. It therefore offers a new method for understanding theatrical representations, based around a truly interdisciplinary study of the interaction between literary and historical methods.
The plays she cites include Arden of Faversham, Two Lamentable Tragedies, A Woman Killed With Kindness, and A Yorkshire Tragedy.
Introduction
1. ‘My narrow-prying neighbours blab’: moral perceptions of the early modern household
2. ‘Choose thee a bed and hangings for a chamber; Take with thee everything that hath thy mark’: objects and spaces in the Early Modern House
3. Arden of Faversham
4. Two Lamentable Tragedies
5. A Woman Killed with Kindness
6. A Yorkshire Tragedy
Conclusion
Appendix 1. Objects in all urban rooms
Appendix 2. Objects in rooms in all Canterbury houses
Appendix 3. Objects in Canterbury office-holders’ rooms
Appendix 4. Percentage of items in each bracket of total inventoried wealth
Appendix 5. Percentage of valued items in each bracket of inventoried wealth