Andrew Gurr: Shakespeare’s Opposites: The Admiral’s Company 1594–1625. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. x + 317. Cloth £ 50.00.

• Jürgen R. Meyer

This monograph by one of the most erudite researchers of the Elizabethan stage introduces its readers not only to just another theatre company, but features “the other” company relative to Shakespeare’s seemingly over-towering Lord Chamberlain’s Men. The Admiral’s Company, which gained so much popularity after its beginnings in 1584 that it, together with the aforementioned actors, formed a duopoly in the years between 1594 and 1600, when all other companies were put off-stage by a strictly anti-histrionically minded London magistrate, and remained highly influential in the years after. However, as Gurr points out, “[w]hether the Admiral’s […] saw their opposites in the Shakespearean company as rivals or as colleagues we have no direct way of knowing.”

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