Thomas Creede’s Looking Glasses and the Print Identity of Queen Elizabeth’s Men
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2022
Chapter 1 shows how stationers’ strategies directed the publication of early commercial history plays and the reputation of early playing troupes. It concentrates on printer-publisher Thomas Creede and argues that his publishing strategies helped to create a print identity for Queen Elizabeth’s Men as a company that promoted Protestant and Tudor sympathies. While previous studies have tended to assume a correlation between performance and print repertories, this chapter argues that the company’s reputation for specializing in history plays could be a consequence of the publication process. Through a contrastive analysis of his non-dramatic output alongside plays such as The True Tragedy of Richard III, Selimus, and The Famous Victories of Henry V, this chapter suggests that, for Creede, the purpose of ‘history’ (broadly conceived) was to provide exemplary and counter-exemplary models for readers, that could be used to promote England’s and Elizabeth I’s interests. Looking beyond Creede’s output, this chapter argues that the history play occupied a central position in the development of a market for commercial playbooks – especially during a pivotal year, 1594.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.