Scenes from the City.

In 2019, Angus Vine invited Edward’s Boys to collaborate on Mercantile Humanism, a project funded by the British Academy, tracing some of the developments between the merchants of early modern London and a profound educational revolution. In this period, new schools sprang up, new methods of teaching and learning were introduced, and new subjects were studied. Indeed, such was the range of education on offer in the city in the seventeenth century that, by 1615, London had come to be known (unofficially at least) as England’s ‘third Universitie’.

The result of this coloration was Scenes from the City: A Civic Education, eleven extracts from Jacobean plays and entertainments, celebrating and satirizing this newly mercantile world. Here follows a selection of reflections on the production.

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Dear Edward’s Boys,
Many congratulations to you all of you on your amazing performances in Scenes from the City. I was genuinely bowled over by what you did with the different scenes and with the variety of material performed. The acting, the music, the movement, the use of space, the choreography, the interpretation of the material, the mastery of Jacobean speech, Ariana and Kirsty’s compositions, the lighting and tech – all were utterly brilliant.

One of the things that most struck me was the variety of tones that you achieved across the different scenes – the bawdy comedy of A Chaste Maid and Michaelmas Term, the emblematic, allegorical, even ethereal, Monuments of Honour, the sober closing speeches from Webster, the virtuoso lesson in salesmanship from Britain’s Burse, and of course the utterly brilliant Songs from the Entertainment for the Merchant Taylors Company. The show was an ensemble piece, linked by a similar theme, but it required very different styles of acting and performance – and you achieved that quite splendidly.

After each show, lots of people asked me if the performances had matched my expectations. I can honestly say that they far exceeded them.

Many congratulations, too, on your adaptability. The three venues were so very different in terms of space, architecture, and audience. You adapted brilliantly to all those things on each occasion.

On a more personal note, I also wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed the experience – it was a privilege and a pleasure working with you last week, as it has been working with Perry over the past three years. (Because of COVID, this show really has been long in the making.) I hope that you all enjoyed participating in the show as much as I did!

As some of you know – I mentioned it to a few of you – this research project is going to conclude with the publication of the book that I’m currently writing. It’s a book about 17th-century merchants and their literary, intellectual, and cultural lives. All the material that I selected for the show features in the book. So Edward's Boys will be fully acknowledged there!

But, more specifically, I also wanted to tell you that your performances have transformed how I think about some of the material in the book, and how I’m going to use the scenes that you performed. To give you just one example, I’m now going to start the introduction to the book with Monuments of Honour – I would never have done this if I hadn’t had the chance to work with you last week.

I told Perry on Saturday night, but I also want to tell you now, that without your participation in the project, it would been less likely to get the grant funding in the first place. Edward’s Boys have a well-deserved reputation for excellence – and last week you more than lived up to that!

Perry knows that I have a tendency to write too much – this message is a case in point. He was essential in editing the script and making sure it wasn’t too wordy or long – so I won’t say much more!

Let me just congratulate you all once again, thank you for your participation in my research project and for working with me (and the thanks here are to Eddie, Emma, David, Jamie, and Perry as well), and take this opportunity to wish you all the best for the future.

Dr Angus Vine
University of Stirling

As always, I left the Edward’s Boys production last night wanting to see it all over again
from the beginning! As always, too, so blown away by the talent, energy and skill of your
boys, always under your guidance, meeting new challenges, from the demands of their
scripted to text to the physical exigencies of their performance space. Such an extraordinarily
novel and inventive programme of scenes one never hoped to see performed.
Professor Margreta de Grazia

What energy, talent and professionalism your performers showed, especially given the extraordinary difficulty of some of those excerpts. I remember working on the stage records of Britain’s Burse when I was a junior researcher for the Cambridge edition of Ben Jonson. Amazing to have brought such excitement – and a wonderful lightness of touch – to these long-forgotten entertainments.
Professor Katharine Craik

Many congratulations on another great success.  It was very characteristically ambitious and remarkable for the eloquent speaking and physical comedy and invention as well as for reading across the canon with such amazing scholarly confidence.  The musical sequence involved some particularly fine scenic poetry, I thought.
Professor Ewan Fernie