Academic staff

Modules taught

Undergraduate

• Renaissance Tragedy & Comedy
• Work Placement in Drama
• Texts in Performance
• Final Production
• People, Plays and Places
• Modern British Theatre in Performance
• Shakespeare

Postgraduate

• Shakespeare's Collaborators

Supervision

PhD and MA supervision in early modern literature and culture

Eleanor's main research interests are in Early Modern drama, theatre practice, publishing culture, and editorial practices. Her research focuses on the cultural, social and political contexts of Renaissance dramatic texts and their performances, both historical and contemporary.

Research Interests

 

• Early Modern drama
• Jonson, Chapman, Middleton and Brome
• material culture
• stage properties
• textual studies
• cleanliness
• clothing

 

Further information

Richard Brome Online (2010): www.hrionline.ac.uk/brome

Journal articles

• Lowe E, '"Bound up and clasped together": bookbinding as metaphor for marriage in Richard Brome's The Love-Sick Court'
  Early Theatre 16 (1) (2013) pp.75-95
  ISSN: 1206-9078
  Abstract Analytical studies of book production in dramatic metaphors most commonly make reference to printing technologies and book replication and dissemination. This essay reconsiders the new bibliography by extending its scope to include bookbinding, with especial attention paid to Richard Brome's 1638 play The Love-Sick Court. In act 4, Doris the maid rejects Geron's advances: ‘We are not yet one volume, both bound up / And clasped together'. I consider this claim in the light of courtship and marriage with particular analysis of the process of bookbinding (from personal practical experience) in relation to the sacrament of marriage. The essay pays additional attention to the close synergies between paper and clothing, and the trope of book/woman.Website 
• Lowe E, 'Confirmation of Richard Brome's final years in Charterhouse Hospital'
  Notes and Queries 54 (4) (2007) pp.416-418
  ISSN: 0029-3970
  Website 
• Lowe, E, 'Offstage and Onstage Drama: New Approaches to Richard Brome'
  Early Theatre 10 (2) (2007) pp.109-116
  ISSN: 1206-9078
  Website 

Book chapters

• Lowe E, 'Plays, 1598-1603' in Giddens E (ed.), The Oxford Handbook to Ben Jonson, Oxford University Press (2018)
  ISBN: 9780199544561 eISBN: 9780191750038
  Abstract

  The chapter begins by marking out the boundaries of ‘early Jonson’ with reference to theatre history and bibliography, before providing recorded responses to Jonson in the contemporary theatre. It identifies 1597 as a key year in his dramatic development, particularly pointing to the influence of George Chapman on Jonson’s playwriting and on popular London theatre more generally. The Case Is Altered, Jonson’s first extant performed play, is analysed in detail, with special attention paid to his presentation of households on the stage (the carefully delineated status of the steward, his lord, and other servants), and integral use of properties, costume and objects in stage business. The conclusion points to Jonson’s skill in crafting little worlds within the theatre, and in bringing London onto the stage.
  

  Website 
• Lowe E, 'Duty and Authority: Malvolio, Stewardship and Montague’s Household Book' in Halsey K, Vine A (ed.), Shakespeare and authority : Citations, conceptions and constructions, Palgrave Macmillan (2018)
  ISBN: 9781137578525 eISBN: 9781137578532
  Abstract In this chapter, Malvolio’s authority as steward will be viewed through the prism of Viscount Montague’s Household Book of 1595, ‘A booke of orders, and rules established [...] for the better direction and governemente of my howseholde’. Montague lists his servants, their duties and his rules for the management of them and the household. It provides a detailed description of the activities and responsibilities of his servants, particular to their specific role, and prioritizes the steward, whom Edward Cahill notes occupies ‘the blurred line between responsibility and authority’, as most important in the household. In the light of this, Malvolio’s interactions and conduct in Twelfth Night will be examined, to gain a deeper understanding of the performance of domestic authority on the early modern stage.Website 
• Lowe E, Korda N, 'In praise of clean linen: Laundering humours on the early modern English stage' in Richardson C, Hamling T, Gaimster D (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Material Culture in Early Modern Europe, Routledge (2017)
  ISBN: 9781409462699 eISBN: 9781315613161
  Abstract The significance of clean linen in early modern England can perhaps best be understood in light of the period’s changing norms of hygiene and their influence on modes of embodiment and dress, social interaction and space, and cultural institutions and forms.2 Social historians document a dramatic shift in the sixteenth century away from immersing the body in water to laundering its linens as the preferred mode of achieving cleanliness.3 Much attention is paid in this context to the disappearance of public bathhouses (popular across Europe during the Middle Ages), whose demise is attributed to fears of contamination following repeated outbreaks of plague and other epidemics, such as syphilis.4 Henry VIII’s closure of London’s licensed ‘stews’ (bathhouses notorious as brothels) following an outbreak of syphilis in 1546 is adduced as an example of this trend.5 Yet the impact of fears of bodily permeability and contagion and the ideals of cleanliness and civility to which they gave rise on the professional stage have remained largely unexplored. Although it is well known that the public playhouses were routinely closed in times of plague,6 scholars have failed to draw any connection between contemporary concerns over hygiene and that quintessential icon of the Shakespearean stage, the pristinely laundered, bleached, and starched linen ruff. The staging of clean linens, we hasten to add, was by no means limited to ruffs: cuffs, handkerchiefs, shirts, smocks, bedlinens, napkins, tablecloths, and many other forms of linen feature prominently in plays of the period.Website 
• Lowe E, Cave RA, Woolland B, 'Actors and Editors: A Feature of the Edition, Richard Brome Online' in Jacqueline Jenkins, Julie Sanders (ed.), Editing, Performance, Texts: New Practices in Medieval and Early Modern English Drama, Palgrave Macmillan (2014)
  ISBN: 9781137320100 eISBN: 9781137320117
  Website 
• Lowe E, ''My cloak's a stranger; he was made but yesterday': Clothing, Language, and the Construction of Theatre in Middleton' in Taylor G, Henley TT (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton, Oxford University Press (2012)
  ISBN: 9780199559886
  
• Lowe E, 'Clothing and identity' in Ben Jonson in context, Cambridge University Press (2010)
  ISBN: 9780521895712
  

Reviews

• Lowe E, review of Labors Lost: Women's Work and the Early Modern English Stage, in Review of English Studies 63 (2013) pp.847-848ISSN: 0034-6551 eISSN: 1471-6968
  Website 
• Lowe E, review of Locating the Queens Men, 1583-1603: Material Practices and Conditions of Playing, in Shakespeare 6 (2010) pp.116-118ISSN: 1745-0918 eISSN: 1745-0926
  Website 

Other publications

• Lowe E, Wiggins M (eds), 'John Ford's "The Fair Maid of the Inn" [scholarly edition]'
  (2017) ISBN: 9780198748878
  Website 
• Lowe E, Wiggins M, Dillon J, 'Accounts and Inventories of the Revels Office, 1541-1546 [scholarly edition]'
  (2016) ISBN: 9780719099274
  Website 
• Lowe E, 'George Chapman's "An Humorous Day's Mirth" [critical online edition]'
  (2013) Abstract http://digitalrenaissance.uvic.ca/Library/Texts/AHDM/Website 
• Lowe E, 'Critical edition of George Chapman's 'A Humorous Day's Mirth''
  (2013) Website 
• Lowe E, 'Richard Brome's "A Mad Couple Well Matched" [scholarly edition]'
  (2010) ISBN: 9780955787614
  Abstract https://www.dhi.ac.uk/brome/viewTranscripts.jsp?play=MC&type=MOD&act=1
  
  Website 
• Lowe E, 'Richard Brome's "The Love-Sick Court" [scholarly edition]'
  (2010) ISBN: 9780955787614
  Abstract https://www.dhi.ac.uk/brome/viewTranscripts.jsp?play=LS&type=MOD&act=1Website 
• Lowe E, 'The Picture'
  Times Literary Supplement (2010) pp.21-21ISSN: 0307-661X
  

Membership of professional bodies

British Shakespeare Association

The Malone Society

Digital Renaissance Editions (General Textual Editor)

Conferences

Conference papers

• 'Linen, Cleanliness and Early Modern Drama', London Renaissance Seminar on Clothing the Renaissance, January 2018.
• '"The flux of apparel": Humours and Clothing in Every Man Out of His Humour', Ben Jonson's Workes and their Contexts: 400 years on, University of Sheffield, November 2016.
• '"Scouring faults": Everyday Cleanliness in 1 and 2 Henry IV', Everyday Shakespeare seminar, World Shakespeare Congress, Stratford-upon-Avon and London, August 2016.
• 'Page, Stage and Screen: Editing Early Modern Drama Online', Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School, St. Anne's College, Oxford University, July 2015.
• Panel member for 'Scholarly Digital Editing', Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School, Wolfson College, Oxford University, July 2014.
• '"Authority and obedience": Malvolio, Stewardship and the Cowdray Manuscript', British Shakespeare Association, Biennial Conference, University of Stirling, July 2014.
• '"Cleane Linnen is my Mistris, and my Theame": Taylor, Brome and the Early Modern Laundry Basket', Early Modern Water Interdisciplinary Symposium, Landscape, Space, Place Research Group, University of Nottingham, May 2011.
• 'Making a clean sweep: Brome, Cleanliness, Clothing and the Renaissance Stage', Renaissance Women's Performance and the Dramatic Canon, International Conference, The Queen's House, Greenwich, July 2010.
• ‘Living History: The Experience of Authenticity’, Belfast, Filming and Performing Renaissance History 1500-1660 conference, April 2009.
• ‘“In to my bed, and out o’ the world presently”: Richard Brome’s Final Years’, Renaissance Endings, Centre for Research in Renaissance Studies, Roehampton University, London, October 2006.
• Prepared an editorial project on A Humorous Day’s Mirth for Editing for Performance workshop led by M. J. Kidnie and Sarah Werner, Shakespeare Association of America conference, New Orleans, USA, April 2004.
• ‘Creative Clues: Textual and Performative Editorial Issues’, Constructing Knowledge Across the Humanities conference, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA, April 2003.
• ‘“Change for the Better”: Freezing and Falsifying Play Texts in the Hope of Enhancing Authorial Visual Art’, ‘Behold and See’: Meaning and Form in Shakespeare’s Visual Art, doctoral conference, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary, November 2002.
• ‘A Humorous Day’s Mirth: Or is it? Titular titillation in Chapman’s Comedy of Humours’, 4th International British Graduate Shakespeare Conference, The Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, June 2002.
• ‘Editing: the “Instrument of Procreation” and Other Textual Problems’, postgraduate seminar, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, March 2002.

Conference Organisation

• Oxford Brookes Early Modern research cluster symposium, 'Early Modern Women', June 2010.
• Organisation of twice-yearly editorial conferences for the Richard Brome Online project, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2005-2008.
• Richard Brome and Caroline Theatre, International Symposium, Royal Holloway, University of London, co-organiser with Richard Cave, June 2007.
• ‘Richard Brome and Caroline Drama’, seminar co-organised with Lucy Munro (Keele University), Shakespeare Association of America conference, San Diego, USA, April 2007.
• Committee co-ordinator, International British Graduate Shakespeare Conference, The Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, 2001 & 2002.

 

 

I studied for my BA in English Literature at the University of Durham before taking an MA in Shakespeare Studies at The Shakespeare Institute (University of Birmingham) in Stratford-upon-Avon. I was awarded my PhD on George Chapman's An Humorous Day's Mirth in 2005, fully funded by the AHRB.