Roaring Boys: Playwrights and Players in Elizabethan and Jacobean England

By Judith Cook and Gregory Doran

With the help of anecdotes, this book aims to recreate the lives and times of the playwrights and actors such as, Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and Jonson, as well as the world in which they lived from 1578 when Burbage built the first 'purpose built' theatre to 1620 when the great age came to its end.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Apr 20, 2006
• ISBN: 9780752495095

Judith Cook

Well-known for her columns in the Guardian’s women’s page and as an anti-nuclear campaigner (she founded the organisation Voice of Women after the Cuban missile crisis of 1962), Judith Cook was also a prolific biographer and investigative journalist. Her subjects included J.B. Priestley, Daphne du Maurier and Hilda Murrell, the anti-nuclear campaigner who died in mysterious circumstances1985. Born in Manchester, Judith Cook lived for many years in Cornwall, where she died in 2004.

Reviews for Roaring Boys

[refpenny · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Although I read this book searching for information on CHristopher Marlowe for an assignment I was writing I found it enjoyable reading. This book covers the period when theatres became established as popular places of entertainment in Elizabethan London. Cook deals particularly with the playwrights but also covers the theatres, actors and plays and relates these to what was happening and the politicla situation.

[riverwillow · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A brilliant overview of the great Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists. Although Cook concentrates on the dramatists - Marlowe, Shakespeare, Dekker, Johnson, et al - their lives and how they would have worked with the theatre companies, she also looks at the contemporary world of the theatre, considering just what it was like to be a member of the audience at one of the great Bankside theatres. As well as considering how the closure of the London theatres during times of plague affected the impresarios and their players. If you're interested in the theatre of the time this is a brilliant introduction.