Staging the Henrician Court was an interdisciplinary project drawing on performance, literary analysis and historical research. It was led by the Principal Investigator, Professor Thomas Betteridge, Oxford Brookes University, and Co-Investigator, Professor Greg Walker, Edinburgh University, and Historic Royal Palaces, the charity that manages Hampton Court Palace: represented primarily by Dr Kent Rawlinson, Buildings Curator. The team was supported by Dr Eleanor Rycroft (Postdoctoral Research Assistant) and Dr Dan Goren (Research Community Developer). RSC director, Gregory Thompson, directed all of the professional productions staged by the project. Staging the Henrician Court extended the findings of the completed preliminary project entitled Henrician Court Drama funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council speculative research grant.
This project addressed two central research questions identified by the earlier project:
- In what ways does staging John Heywood’s The Play of the Weather utilise and/or transform the space of the Great Hall?
- To what extent did Henrician court drama create courtly space?
Staging the Henrician Court approached these questions from two angles: a staged production of John Heywood’s The Play of the Weather in August 2009 in the Great Hall at Hampton Court Palace; and an ongoing discussion of the insights generated by that production through an open-access website and academic publications. One of the original aspects of the project was the way an online research community helped generate the agenda for the two workshops staged in March 2010.
The project ran from November 2008 to November 2010. It generated a range of outputs including:
- The project website.
- A production of The Play of the Weather, John Heywood, 4th to 8th August, 2009 performed in the Great Hall at Hampton Court Palace.
- Two workshop productions on 4th and 6th March, 2010 performed in the Great Hall at Hampton Court Palace.
- An academic symposium at Hampton Court Palace, 6th March 2010.
- A production of John Skelton's Magnyfycence, 1st and 2nd May, 2010 performed in the Great Hall at Hampton Court Palace.
- A number of public talks and discussions given at Hampton Court Palace by members of the project team.
- Academic papers presented at conferences and seminars.
Journal articles and academic publications:
- Professor Thomas Betteridge - 'John Heywood's The Play of the Weather and Court Space in 1532 / 33'
- Dr Elisabeth Dutton - 'John Heywood, Henry, and Hampton Court Palace'.
- Dr Dan Goren and Professor Thomas Betteridge - 'Old Habits, New Dynamics : A Case Study of Web 2.0 in Collaborative Humanities and Arts Research'.
- Dr Kent Rawlinson - 'Hall's Chronicle and the Greenwich Triumphs 1527'.
- Dr Eleanor Rycroft - 'Gender and Status in The Play of the Weather'.
- Dr Eleanor Rycroft - 'The Play of the Weather in Performance in the Great Hall at Hampton Court'.
- Dr Eleanor Rycroft - 'Morality and Masculinity in Youth and Hick Scorner'.
- Professor Greg Walker - 'Early Tudor Drama and the Arts of Resistance'.
