Civic London 1559-1642

London's dramatic records from the Elizabethan and Stuart periods - the age of William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Middleton, John Webster, Thomas Dekker, and others - are of unparalleled importance, but have been mostly overlooked by scholarship until now. For too long dismissed as the domain of dour anti-theatrical puritans, a place where playgoing was frowned upon if not explicitly prohibited, the City of London was in fact a hotbed of dramatic activity, and the numerous records that survive of performance within its boundaries are an untapped resource.

From the mid sixteenth to the mid seventeenth centuries, theatrical activity was taking place within the City of London at the same time as in the famous suburban playhouses such as the Theatre, the Globe, and the Rose. Indeed, on many occasions the very same writers and performers - including dramatists Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, Thomas Dekker, John Webster, Thomas Heywood, and Anthony Munday, as well as high-profile actors like Richard Burbage of the King's Men and Edward Alleyn of the Admiral's Men - were being employed in both domains, a fact which deserves to be better known. 'Civic London 1559-1642' will produce for the first time a full picture of performances at the overlooked City inns such as the Bel Savage on Ludgate and the Bull on Bishopsgate, where, for example, some of Marlowe's plays, and possibly even some by Shakespeare, were likely staged. It will investigate performances in the City's livery company halls and in its schools (such as the Merchant Taylors' School, attended by Thomas Kyd and Edmund Spencer, amongst others), as well as exploring pageantry and drama on the river Thames and on the City streets.

'Civic London 1558-1642' will therefore be the first project to reveal the depth and richness of the City's performance culture in the Renaissance, enabling academics as well as lay researchers to understand the vibrant theatrical traditions of England's capital city in the hey-day of English drama. The project's research findings will be hosted on a searchable, free-to-use pre-publication website, accompanied by user guides and search aids. The research will thus be accessible by local, national, and international audiences and by non-specialists as well as academics. Non-specialist audiences may initially find the project research interesting based on their knowledge of the most famous dramatist of the day, but through 'Civic London 1559-1642' they will learn that there was a great deal more to Renaissance theatre than simply Shakespeare. The project will foreground the important contributions to the drama of this period made by other writers and performers, some of whom will be less familiar but who in this context were actually rather more important.

The project has public engagement built in throughout. The cultural history of London is of perennial appeal, especially since some of the forms of performance captured by the research - such as the Lord Mayor's Show, which still draws large crowds annually - continue to this day, and thus speak directly to the lived experience of many people. Part of the project's public engagement work is to develop a mobile app to provide virtual walking tours to enable people to map and locate the performance venues explored by the research, thus enhancing its accessibility still further. The project team also plan a free public exhibition and study day, and a public lecture, at accessible venues in London.

In addition, the research will undoubtedly have a substantial impact on teaching and learning at school, college and HE level. Drama from the time of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, and their contemporaries is central to GCSE, A Level and university English curricula, and being able to draw freely on the project outputs from the project's website will enable teachers and students alike to transform their understanding of the theatre of this crucial period.

The project is designed to offer short, medium and long-term forms of impact.
1. Short-term/ongoing activities.
Throughout the funded period, project findings will be published on an open-access pre-publication website whilst the research is underway, so that lay researchers as well as academics can able to engage with the research from early on. In addition, the PI and RA will maintain a social media presence for the project via Twitter and Instagram, which will be used (in tandem with the social media accounts run by the project's research partners) to share images of selected historical records as well as the critical insights they generate in order to create and maintain wider interest in the project as it unfolds. The PI has been sharing Civic London research images on social media to some 2400 Twitter followers during the current academic year and the posts always generate considerable interest. These activities will also benefit the project's archival partners by promoting increased public awareness and use of their collections.

2. Medium-term activities.
Towards the end of the funded period, in tandem with selected project partners, the PI will run two events in London: a public lecture at an accessible venue in the City of London such as one of the livery company halls, and an exhibition of up to three months in duration at the Guildhall Library concluded by an outreach study day at the same venue. The latter will form part of the Library's annual series of events; information about both will be disseminated via their mail-lists and events website, and will be aimed at the kind of informed general audience who usually attend the Library's events. Feedback from non-academic as well as academic participants will be gathered at both the exhibition and the study day, as well as throughout the life of the project, and will be incorporated into the final project report.

3. Longer-term activities.
With the REED technical team and in collaboration with partners Layers of London and The Map of Early Modern London, the PI will work towards the development of GPS-enabled virtual walking tours of key City locations relating to the research, such as the City inns, livery company halls and schools, staging posts on the routes of civic pageantry, and so on. The idea of virtual walking tours was launched at the 2018 Lord Mayor's Show, where the PI produced for the Show's official programme an annotated map showing the pageant stations used during the early modern period, enabling readers of the programme to follow the routes of the Show and of the Royal Entry. The eventual intention is to host these and related walks on an online mapping environment to enable them to be experienced remotely by many more people than can attend traditional walking tours. They will be designed to be accessible on the move, on both Android and Apple mobile phones as well as via a desktop website. During the funded period of research the PI and RA will work with focus groups composed of a range of different potential users, as well as the project partners just mentioned, to develop the concept to a point where it can be taken into production after the funded period of research has concluded. With the assistance of Dominic Reid, the Pageantmaster of the Lord Mayor's Show, the PI will take the opportunity of the 2020 Lord Mayor's Show to promote the resource.

The Pageantmaster and PI are also intending to pitch to BBC Radio 4 an 'In Our Time' programme, to coincide with the annual Lord Mayor's Show in November 2020, about the history and continued importance of civic pageantry, drawing on the project research. 2020 is the 400th anniversary of one of the most controversial mayoral appointments of the early modern period and the story these events tell will be of interest to a wider non-academic audience. The Pageantmaster and PI will scope and develop such a pitch during the funded period of the project.