Shakespeare and the Countess: The Battle that Gave Birth to the Globe

by Chris Laoutaris

Overview

In November 1596, a woman signed a document that would nearly destroy the career of William Shakespeare . . .

Who was this figure who played such an instrumental role in Shakespeare's life? Never far from controversy when she was alive, Lady Elizabeth Russell, the self-styled Dowager Countess of Bedford, has been edited out of public memory, yet the chain of events she set in motion would make Shakespeare the legendary figure we all know today.

Lady Elizabeth Russell's extraordinary life made her one of the most formidable women of the Renaissance. And, in November 1596, she became the leader of a movement aimed at destroying William Shakespeare's theatrical troupe--a plot that resulted in the closure of the Blackfriars Theatre but the construction, instead, of The Globe.

Providing new pieces to this puzzle, Chris Laoutaris's rousing history reveals for the first time this startling battle against Shakespeare and the Lord Chamberlain's Men.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681771410
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	04/04/2016
Pages:	528
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

CHRIS LAOUTARIS is a Lecturer and Birmingham Fellow at The Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-Upon-Avon. As well as being recently commissioned as a contributor to Cambridge University's Cambridge Guide to Shakespeare's First Folio, Laoutaris has written for the Financial Times and Sunday Express. He is currently working on a project for the Shakespeare Institute entitled Team Shakespeare: The Men who Created the Shakespeare Legacy.

Editorial Reviews

"Life comes close to imitating art in Shakespeare and the Countess. Laoutaris throws fascinating light on [Lady Elizabeth Russell's] success in preventing the Burbages, the playwright's partners, from opening a theatre in Blackfriars."--The New York Times Book Review

"Surprising. Elizabeth deserves the years of research and hundreds of pages that Laoutaris has given her; she can now join the gallery of neglected women resurrected by feminist scholarship."--The Washington Post

"Engaging and informative. Readers will get a bird's eye view of court life, religious infighting, political scheming, competing spies and international intrigue at the turn of the 17th century. Laoutaris is a fine prose stylist."--The Providence Journal

From the Publisher

In his compelling book Chris Laoutaris sheds new light on this turbulent episode in the Bard's career. It is a fascinating story and Laoutaris tells it with a winning combination of scholarly rigour and elegant prose. Contributing something fresh in the crowded arena of Shakespeare studies is not easy, but Laoutaris has done precisely that. A splendid book.

Herald Scotland

A splendid and original book. No one has fleshed out the characters [in the battle for Shakespeare's playhouse] or followed in their footsteps as assiduously as Laoutaris. Shakespeare's adversary was a formidable old trout fully deserving of a biography in her own right.

Sunday Telegraph (Book of the Week)

The story of Shakespeare and the Countess has all the hallmarks of one of his famous plays – treachery, deception, death and triumph. A fantastic tale. Laoutaris discovered a web of deceit and a true villain worthy of any of Shakespeare’s plays – as well as information previously thought lost.

Daily Mail

Life comes close to imitating art in Shakespeare and the Countess. Laoutaris resuscitates as the great playwright’s foil the long-forgotten Elizabeth Russell, a self-proclaimed dowager countess and unblushing harridan, who could have stepped out of a turbulent history play.
Laoutaris throws fascinating light on the Puritans’ determined fight against both Roman Catholicism and the newly established Church of England and on her success in preventing the Burbages, the playwright’s partners, from opening an indoor theatre in Blackfriars beside her home.

The New York Times

A tale of 16th century NIMBYism. The
Puritan termagant Elizabeth Russell mounted a successful campaign against a theatre company, which boasted one W. Shakespeare as a partner. Laoutaris has unearthed a fascinating story.

The Independent (UK)

Engaging and informative. Readers will get a bird’s eye view of court life, religious infighting, political scheming, competing spies and international intrigue at the turn of the 17th century. Laoutaris is an indefatigable researcher and a fine prose stylist.

Providence Journal

A work of historical and literary detection which takes us straight to the heart of religious politics in Elizabethan England.

The New Statesman

Laoutaris delves into all this with immense gusto, introducing his readers to a dizzying cast of characters and approaching his subject from myriad different angles. Thanks to [his] impressive research, this largely forgotten figure emerges as a woman of great erudition, determination and courage, scarcely less remarkable than her namesake and contemporary Elizabeth I.

The Literary Review

Genuinely groundbreaking. A kickass lady. Elizabeth Russell is awesome. It’s a thrilling tale and Laoutaris tells it superbly, with fluency and passion and a masterful eye for the dramatic. Emphatic, meticulously researched and strikingly original, Shakespeare and the Countess is bursting at the seams with new research.

Marylebone Journal (Book of the Week)

Historian and biographer Chris Laoutaris tells the story of Russell's life, her epic legal battles and her capricious, violent world with sympathy, scholarship and vivid description. He has done extensive original research to piece together new insights and map the complex connections of Elizabethan society.

Shelf Awareness

I'm in love with the brilliant research on display in Shakespeare and the Countess and how it brings to light Lady Elizabeth Russell, a force to be reckoned with and a trailblazing early feminist.

Best Books of the Year Observer

Fabulous! Chris Laoutaris reveals an untold story about William Shakespeare. It’s a gripping tale that enables us to see Shakespeare in a new light. I could not recommend it highly enough.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Alison Weir

This is a detailed biography of a vigorous (if not likeable) woman who stood close to power throughout the reign of Elizabeth I. [Elizabeth] Russell was a remarkable person - clever, domineering and ruthless... Laoutaris has done a thorough research job.

Sunday Times

The season’s big mainstream Shakespeare book. Elizabeth Russell is a terrific subject for a biography, and Laoutaris is a hugely energetic narrator who brings every detail of his story to life. So entertaining. A big, rambunctious biography carried off with storytelling aplomb and deep, sometimes groundbreaking research.

Open Letters Monthly

Surprising.
Interesting. Elizabeth deserves the years of research and hundreds of pages that Laoutaris has given her; she can now join the gallery of neglected women resurrected by feminist scholarship.

The Washington Post

An energetic and enterprising book. Laoutaris has done some very valuable archival work. It is certainly a story worth telling, and Laoutaris tells it well.

London Review of Books

It could be a tale for the stage itself, involving an ambitious parvenu, a self-styled countess, more than a hint of treachery and one of the more spectacular examples of historical Nimbysim.

Daily Telegraph

Greatly enjoy[ed] Shakespeare and the Countess. Fascinating how much archives can still yield.

Stanley Wells

One word William Shakespeare didn’t invent but could have: NIMBY. Laoutaris tells the story of Elizabeth Russell, the wealthy and educated daughter of King
Edward VI's tutor. She argued that a new playhouse would bring 'all manner of vagrant and lewd persons' to her London neighborhood. Stymied, the theater group built the soon-to-be-famous Globe in another area.

New York Post

Life comes close to imitating art in Shakespeare and the Countess. Laoutaris resuscitates as the great playwright’s foil the long-forgotten Elizabeth Russell, a self-proclaimed dowager countess and unblushing harridan, who could have stepped out of a turbulent history play.
Laoutaris throws fascinating light on the Puritans’ determined fight against both Roman Catholicism and the newly established Church of England and on her success in preventing the Burbages, the playwright’s partners, from opening an indoor theatre in Blackfriars beside her home.

The New York Times

One word William Shakespeare didn’t invent but could have: NIMBY. Laoutaris tells the story of Elizabeth Russell, the wealthy and educated daughter of King
Edward VI's tutor. She argued that a new playhouse would bring 'all manner of vagrant and lewd persons' to her London neighborhood. Stymied, the theater group built the soon-to-be-famous Globe in another area.

New York Post

The story of Shakespeare and the Countess has all the hallmarks of one of his famous plays – treachery, deception, death and triumph. A fantastic tale. Laoutaris discovered a web of deceit and a true villain worthy of any of Shakespeare’s plays – as well as information previously thought lost.

Daily Mail

An energetic and enterprising book. Laoutaris has done some very valuable archival work. It is certainly a story worth telling, and Laoutaris tells it well.

?London Review of Books

04/06/2015
While Shakespeare serves as this book’s headline attraction, it is the ambitious, crafty, and eagerly litigious Elizabeth Russell who takes center stage in this power struggle-filled Elizabethan drama. Shakespeare scholar Laoutaris (Shakespearean Maternities) clearly respects Russell’s ability to outmaneuver her well-heeled enemies as he fleshes out her decades of property acquisitions and continual pressure on high-ranking members of her extended Cecil and Bacon families. The self-proclaimed countess threatened Shakespeare’s livelihood with her suit against “London’s first permanent playhouse, the Theatre,” near her home, but her opposition inadvertently resulted in the creation of the famous Globe Theatre, which secured the Bard’s legacy. While Russell’s voice is heard strongly through letters and legal documents, Shakespeare’s opinion on the war over the Blackfriars property appears largely in the book’s last third, primarily through Laoutaris’s reading of his plays. That results in some tenuous threads—though others are much firmer—linking his opponents to various characters, including the notable Falstaff. As Laoutaris shows, Russell—a “staunch Puritan,” funerary monument designer, and the only female sheriff in Elizabethan England—was worthy of starring in a Shakespearean drama. 16 pages b&w illus. (June)

Publishers Weekly

A splendid and original book… No one has fleshed out the characters [in the battle for Shakespeare's playhouse] or followed in their footsteps as assiduously as Laoutaris.

Sunday Telegraph

In his compelling book Chris Laoutaris sheds new light on this turbulent episode in the Bard's career... It is a fascinating story and Laoutaris tells it with a winning combination of scholarly rigour and elegant prose. Contributing something fresh in the crowded arena of Shakespeare studies is not easy, but Laoutaris has done precisely that... A splendid book.

Herald (Scotland)

04/15/2015
Lady Elizabeth Russell (1540–1609) is known primarily for her 1596 petition to close the Blackfriars Theatre, which nearly destroyed William Shakespeare's career. In this in-depth biography Laoutaris (lecturer, Shakespeare Inst.) goes beyond the petition to paint an engaging portrait of this powerful noblewoman. Unusual for her time, Russell was highly educated and became known for her religious and political activism in support of Puritanism and female property rights, respectively. She was a powerful force in Elizabethan England both because of her familial ties to the throne and her formidable personality. The author shows, by deftly weaving the events during Russell's lifetime and her personal impacts played therein, that he exhaustively researched his subject using both primary sources (some of which have never been thoroughly studied) and secondary sources (as evidenced by the bibliography). He even makes a continual argument that the Globe Theatre, and Shakespeare's success, wouldn't exist without Russell since the building's existence, and thereby the Bard's career, stemmed directly from her confrontation with his acting troupe. VERDICT Those interested in religious history, especially the religious wars in England; the history and intrigues of Elizabethan England; women's history; and Shakespearean history will find this book an immensely riveting read.—Laura Hiatt-Smith, Douglas County Libs., CO

Library Journal

2015-03-05
The dense story of the 1596 endeavor by a powerful, litigious countess to block the opening of Shakespeare's Blackfriars Theatre in London. A piece of choice London real estate sent Countess Elizabeth Russell (1528-1609), one of the most learned and fiercely Puritan women in late-16th-century Europe, to petition Queen Elizabeth I's Privy Council to prevent the opening of the Blackfriars, commanded by the playwright, his troupe, the Chamberlain's Men, and their patron, George Carey. British Shakespeare scholar and lecturer Laoutaris (Shakespearean Maternities: Crises of Conception in Early Modern England, 2008) gets swept up in the overwhelming detail concerning these characters and their connections—e.g., Elizabeth's two deceased husbands, one the ambassador to France, Thomas Hoby, the author of the influential Book of the Courtier, which Shakespeare would draw on; the other, John Russell, also a radical nonconformist more than a decade her junior. It was Hoby's family property in the Blackfriars (formerly a monastery campus) that Elizabeth inhabited from 1570 onward, next to the Office of the Queen's Revels, the hub of London's theatrical district and an area that drew immigrant refugees from the ongoing wars of religion. These residents would support Elizabeth's cause, and there was also the matter that Shakespeare frequently waded into explosive political material in many of his plays—e.g., in his flattery of the queen's former favorite-turned-traitor, the Earl of Essex, in Richard II. When Elizabeth presented her document to the Privy Council, warning of "all manner of vagrant and lewd persons" consorting with the playhouse, she managed to secure the signatures of Shakespeare's patron and his publisher, Richard Field. Plodding painstakingly through the research, Laoutaris reveals how Elizabeth's petition exploited the uneasy social conditions created by recent inflation and civil unrest. However, when one door closed, another opened—namely, Shakespeare's legendary run at the new playhouse, the Globe. Intrepid research translates into a sometimes-intriguing narrative stuffed with mystifying detail.

Kirkus Reviews