Accessing the Records of Early English Drama in Norwich, 1540-1642

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At the heart of the proposed research project are the interactions between a local community and its civic institutions, and a wide variety of drama and festivities - interactions that took place when such entertainments were first produced in the streets, inn-yards, and halls of early modern Norwich, and those that continue to take place in the twenty-first century, as both academic and non-specialist audiences are provided with a means to access and engage with the archives of the city's rich and important dramatic heritage. The project centres on the production of a new scholarly edition of the archival records of drama, music, festivity, entertainments, masques, and pageantry performed in Norwich between 1540-1642. The second city of the kingdom throughout this period, Norwich boasted a tremendously wide-ranging tradition of civic drama produced by schoolmasters of the city's grammar school, the city corporation, and small troupes supported by the county nobility. It was also a popular stop for itinerant London-based playing companies. My research brings together in one volume the records of all this activity, including details of performers, musicians, playing spaces, civic participation and regulation, local patronage, and monies made and spent. It also provides annotated texts of plays and entertainments written for performance in the city during the early modern period, including new editions of those produced for Elizabeth I's 1578 East Anglian progress - one of the first moments at which the figure of the virgin queen was used in Elizabethan mythography - and those of a play written by Ralph Knevet for a one-off performance at the Norwich Florists' Feast in 1631. The volume will be published in the Records of Early English Drama (REED) series, in both hard-copy and green open access, and it revises and greatly expands upon the first - now out of print - edition of these records, edited by David Galloway back in the early 1980s. (Details of the scope of my revised volume are set out in the Case for Support.) The published research will itself serve as an archive of sorts providing all subsequent scholars with interests in early modern literature, festive culture, civic administration, and social history with a valuable annotated collection of primary documentation. The revised introduction to the volume will also provide an up-to-date critical discussion of the impact of the Reformation on drama and traditional entertainments using Norwich and its environs as a detailed exemplar. My research project will not only make these documents more accessible for scholars, but it actively encourages the records to be used by the broadest range of non-academic audiences and readers. To this end, it involves the creation of an educational pack for primary and secondary schools all about Elizabeth I's 1578 visit to Norwich and East Anglia. The pack, and accompanying logbook, will be produced by the PI in collaboration with the Forum Trust based at the Millennium Library, Norwich, and draws out the different narratives and moments of performance that are described or alluded to in both literary and administrative documentary sources now located in the Norfolk county record office and in other repositories, including the National Archives. The project as a whole thus offers an innovative demonstration of how Norwich's early modern civic drama can be accessed by new audiences. Finally, and most significantly, the project will serve as a case-study that can be consulted and applied beyond the immediate East Anglian context illustrating how recondite archival sources traditionally perceived as being restricted or inaccessible can be used in a non-specialist educational setting. It tracks how early English drama moves from the city's streets and original playing places, via the archive and scrupulously edited scholarly edition, to the university seminar or school classroom, and out into the local community once again.