Childhood, Education and the Stage in Early Modern England

Download or read book Childhood, Education and the Stage in Early Modern England written by Richard Preiss and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What did childhood mean in early modern England? To answer this question, this book examines two key contemporary institutions: the school and the stage. The rise of grammar schools and universities, and of the professional stage featuring boy actors, reflect the culture's massive investment in children. In this collection, an international group of well-respected scholars examines how the representation of children by major playwrights and poets reflected the period's educational and cultural values. This book contains chapters that range from Shakespeare and Ben Jonson to the contemporary plays of Tom Stoppard, and that explore childhood in relation to classical humanism, medicine, art, and psychology, revealing how early modern performance and educational practices produced attitudes to childhood that still resonate to this day.