T Hill

'This Is as True as All the Rest Is': Religious Propaganda and the Representation of Truth in the 1580s

ferociously to inform (or misinform) that sector of the English public that had access to such works about events involving a number of Catholic priests and sympathisers and their opponents. This period saw a major episode of crisis over counter-Reformation Catholicism, exemplified by the mission to England headed by Edmund Campion, and the consequent arrest, torture, trial and execution of Campion and his associates. Numerous texts were produced from a variety of perspectives to intervene in the representation of these men, their motives, the treatment they received, and the danger they may or may not have posed to Protestant England. The propagandist texts with which I am concerned range across the various possible positions on these and other Catholic priests. As we have seen in relation to anti -theatrical writing in particular,

'Euer Obedient in His Studies': Thomas Middleton and the City, 1620–1622

Thomas Middleton’s career in civic pageantry commenced at the very start of the seventeenth century, and it was consolidated in 1620 when he was appointed Chronologer of the City of London. Although the City Chronologer appointment was a token of the esteem in which Middleton was held in civic circles, these were troubled times for the nation at large as well as for the City that offered Middleton both work and kudos. His new role came during a run of bad luck for the City and his initial commissions were written during a period of political and economic crisis. This article explores the ways in which Middleton negotiated some complex civic appointments and transitions in the early 1620s, focusing on his composite work Honorable Entertainments compos’de for the Seruice of this Noble Cittie and his mayoral Shows for 1621 and 1622.

‘In fiction as in fact’: 40 years of literary studies in The London Journal

For four decades The London Journal has been at the heart of scholarly debate on the history and the culture of Britains capital city, from the middle ages to the present. Despite the perception in some quarters that this is a journal primarily of relevance to historians, from the outset The London Journal has set out to cover ‘the fine and performing arts, the natural environment and … commentaries on metropolitan life in fiction as in fact’. Scholarly and theoretical trends within literary studies have evolved considerably over the last 40 years, and these developments can be traced in the ways in which contributors to The London Journal have variously engaged with literature. In exploring such engagements, this survey article discusses some notable articles published in the journal over this time-period, and concludes by evaluating the degree to which it has, as its founding principles stated it should, offered a truly ‘multi-disciplinary’ approach to London studies.

Owners and Collectors of the Printed Books of the Early Modern Lord Mayors’ Shows

Abstract The annual London Lord Mayor’s Show, which saw its heyday in the early modern period, exists in printed form from 1585. These books stand as permanent witnesses to an ephemeral event. Until quite recently they have not been subject to any thoroughgoing bibliographical study, however. This article explores the evidence that remains of readers’ ownership of and interactions with these works from the seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth. Copies of these works were owned by collectors including Humphrey Dyson, Robert Burton, Anthony Wood, and John Philip Kemble. Through an exploration of handlists and annotations, one can discover how these books were collected and categorized. Such an analysis reveals not just the original cultural meaning of these works but also the ways in which owners and collectors identified them in generic terms, thus suggesting their changing value to readers.

‘On the most Eminent seate thereof is Gouernement Illustrated’: Staging Power in the Lord Mayor’s Show

The most spectacular London stage in the early modern period was not the Globe or the Blackfriars, nor even the Banqueting House at Whitehall, but the annual Lord Mayor’s Show. The Show was the City’s celebration of the inauguration of the most important commoner in the country and it was noted across Europe for its splendour. As one of the multiple dramatic modes that thrived in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century London the Lord Mayor’s Show was high-profile street theatre. The mayoral Show also serves to challenge the still-prevalent notion that civic authorities were uniformly hostile to all forms of theatricality in this period.1 Rather, the Lord Mayor’s Show reveals the City’s government at times to be an enabler rather than an oppressor of theatre. Moreover, the Shows amply demonstrate what this volume calls the ‘innate theatricality’of the governing practices of the early modern metropolis.2 It is this juxtaposition of theatricality and modes of power that this chapter will explore.