‘M[aster] Monkesters schollars’: Richard Mulcaster, Physical Education, and the Early Modern Boy Companies

This article reconsiders the pedagogical theories of leading Elizabethan teacher Richard Mulcaster in the light of early modern boy company repertories. Focusing on Mulcaster’s teachings relating to the skilled, moving body, the article traces his connections to the Children of Paul’s and the Children of the Blackfriars to suggest that the boy company stage became a site that explored boys’ physical skills. The early modern boy company repertories, the article ultimately suggests, positioned their young actors as ‘Mr Mulcaster’s scholars’.

Versions of the Common

The first chapter establishes the double sense of the word ‘common’ as something universal or shared and something base. It defines the terms ‘common’ and ‘commonwealth’ against the related terms ‘public’ and ‘republic’ in the work of Thomas Starkey, Thomas Elyot, Thomas Smith, and Richard Mulcaster. It also explores the significance of the term ‘commonwealth’ in sixteenth-century thinking in order to outline the relationship between literature and society in the period. The chapter ends by pointing to the central role of the common in the relationship between humanism and Protestantism and in the question ‘why is the Renaissance in England so late?’, both of which the rest of the book will address.