Shakespeare & Co.
Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Dekker, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, John Fletcher and the Other Players in His Story
1
The Theatrical Scene
Early one morning in 1600 or 1601, boys ran around London sticking up bills announcing that if you went to the Globe playhouse on the south bank of the River Thames that afternoon you could see a new play called Hamlet. They pasted the bills on the doors of taverns and houses, and on pissing-posts provided for the convenience of those who walked the streets. The lads pulled down out-of-date bills announcing earlier performances and chucked them away. Hastily printed, these pieces of paper were of the moment. They brought profit to printers such as William Jaggard, later to be one of the publishers of the collected edition of Shakespeare's plays known as the First Folio, which appeared in 1623. From 1602 Jaggard held a monopoly on the production of playbills. Not a single one survives, but at least we have a transcript of one that was displayed by traveling players in Norwich in 1624; it read: 'Here within this place at one of the clock shall be acted an excellent new comedy called The S ...
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