Emma Smith (Oxford): Seventeenth-century cumberbitches and hiddlestoners?

What do we know about actors’ fans and the development of celebrity theatrical culture in the early modern paper? My paper reviews various evidence, from Edward Dering’s payments to actors to attend social gatherings with his friends, to the annotated Shakespeare First Folio in Glasgow in which the Cary brothers spot their favourite performers, to try to understand the reception and earning potential of actors as individuals. Repertory studies has done much to help us see the importance of the acting company as a unit of meaning; here I try to understand the reception of specific actors in the period.