Teaching with the Records of Early English Drama

As a practical and much needed companion to the REED volumes, __Teaching with the Records of Early English Drama__ will prove invaluable to both students and teachers of Medieval English Drama. Contents 5 Acknowledgments 9 Abbreviations 11 Introduction 13 SECTION I: VITAL EVIDENCE: THEATRE HISTORY 31 1. The Audience of Early Drama: REED and the Techniques of Historical Fiction 31 2. Using REED in Teaching the Whitsun Plays of Tudor Chester 42 SECTION II: DOCUMENTS IN ACTION: PERFORMANCE PREPARATION 55 3. 'It's as if I'm really doing research!' 55 4. Teaching without Texts: Early English Drama for Performance Studies Students 76 5. Using REED Chester for Classroom and Performance 98 SECTION III: CRITICAL ILLUMINATION: ENGLISH LITERATURE 115 6. Using Historical Documents in the Literature Classroom: Elizabethan and Jacobean Church Court Cases 115 7. Teaching Poems from Robert Herrick's Hesperides with the Aid of REED Documents 125 SECTION IV: DRAMATIC ACTIVITY: SOCIAL HISTORY 145 8. The Use of REED Documents in Teaching Early Modern English History 145 9. 'The husbandry and manage of my house': Teaching Women's Studies from the Records of Early English Drama Collections 170 10. Palaeography in the Undergraduate Drama Class: Teaching the Secret Life of Documents 182 SECTION V: ENTERTAINING RECORDS: LANGUAGE HISTORY 197 11. REED and Language Teaching 197 12. Going to HEL: REED and Diachronic Linguistics 204 SECTION VI: REFERENCES 225 13. Introducing Undergraduates to Documents in REED Collections 225 REED Collections 239 Works Cited 241 List of Contributors 251 Index 255

Since the appearance of the first volume in 1979, the Records of Early English Drama (REED) series has made available an accurate and useable transcription of all surviving documentary evidence of dramatic, ceremonial, and minstrel activity in Great Britain up to the closing of the theatres in 1642. Although they are immensely valuable to scholars, the REED volumes sometimes prove difficult for students to use without considerable assistance. With this book, Elza Tiner aims to make the records accessible for classroom use. The contributors to the volume describe the various ways in which students can learn from working with these documents. Divided into five sections, the volume illustrates how specific disciplines can use the Records to provide resources for students including ways to teach the historical documents of early English drama, training students in acting and producing, historical contexts for the interpretation of literature, as well as the study of local history, women’s studies, and historical linguistics. As a practical and much needed companion to the REED volumes, Teaching with the Records of Early English Drama will prove invaluable to both students and teachers of Medieval English Drama.