§1 We are delighted to be able to make available on the website, as promised, the film of our June 2013 production of The Dutch Courtesan. The filming was carried out at the first public performance, using a four-camera set-up, directed by my television colleague Patrick Titley, and with the sound recording under the control […]
Author: Michael Cordner
Mapping The Dutch Courtesan
§1 The Dutch Courtesan divides opinion. For one scholar, it is Marston’s only “masterpiece in dramatic portraiture” (Bradbrook, 162), while, for another, it exemplifies the terminal “deliquescence of his talent” in the final phases of his playwriting career (Ure, 77). If views of the script’s quality diverge so radically, so do accounts of its major characters. […]
Franceschina’s Voice
§1 Scholarship on The Dutch Courtesan has been fascinated by its title character’s idiosyncratic and wayward accent and, with very few exceptions, has expressed decisive views about its likely effect on audiences. According to one observer, Marston has burdened Franceschina with a “grotesque foreign lingo”, which irreparably cuts her “off from normal life” (Hunter, 320). […]
The Dutch Courtesan, 1964
§1 In summer 1964 the newly established National Theatre made its first venture into the non-Shakespearean early modern repertoire with a production, by William Gaskill and Piers Haggard, of John Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan. Across the preceding century those advocating the establishment of such a flagship enterprise had consistently featured in their propaganda a requirement […]
About the Dutch Courtesan Project
In June 2013 John Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan will be staged at the Department of Theatre, Film, Television and Interactive Media at the University of York. This is the latest in a continuing series of productions of plays from the early modern repertoire there. This website has been created, both to track the Marston production […]