Publicity and the Early Modern Stage: People Made Public

What did publicity look like before the eighteenth century? What were its uses and effects, and around whom was it organized? The essays in this collection ask these questions of early modern London. Together, they argue that commercial theater was a vital engine in celebrity's production. The men and women associated with playing--not just actors and authors, but playgoers, characters, and the extraordinary local figures adjunct to playhouse productions--introduced new ways of thinking about the function and meaning of fame in the period; about the networks of communication through which it spread; and about theatrical publics. Drawing on the insights of Habermasean public sphere theory and on the interdisciplinary field of celebrity studies, Publicity and the Early Modern Stage introduces a new and comprehensive look at early modern theories and experiences of publicity.

Allison Deutermann is Associate Professor of English at Baruch College, City University of New York, USA. She is the author of Listening for Theatrical Form in Early Modern England (2016) and, with András Kiséry, co-editor of Formal Matters: Reading the Materials of English Renaissance Literature (2013).

Matt Hunter is Assistant Professor of English at Texas Tech University, USA, where he teaches courses on Shakespeare, early modern literature, and literary criticism. His writing has appeared in Representations, English Literary History, English Literary Renaissance, and The Los Angeles Review of Books.

Musa Gurnis is the author of Mixed Faith and Shared Feeling (2018), a co-publication of the University of Pennsylvania Press and the Folger Shakespeare Library. Her articles have appeared in the journals Shakespeare and Shakespeare Studies, as well as in the edited collection Religion and Drama in Early Modern England (2011).