ABSTRACT
A Game at Chess was probably the last time a significantly innovative play would be premiered at one of London’s open air playhouses: after this, theatrical originality was found more and more in the private, indoor theatres. In the 1630s, Queen Henrietta Maria scandalised many by visiting the Blackfriars Theatre at least three times, and she invited the leading actor, Joseph Taylor, to coach her ladies and herself in acting. Throughout the Jacobean and Caroline periods, the King’s Men were the dominant theatre company in London, and their title–the King’s Men–was no idle one. Stephen Hammerton who started as a boy actor in the early 1630s, became probably the most popular star in England in the years before the closing of the theatres. As the King’s Men’s new contracted playwright, Philip massinger set about writing plays at the rate of two per year–too many, of course, but his oeuvre contains some remarkable dramas.
