Buckingham Does the Globe: Henry VIII and the Politics of Popularity in the 1620s

Scholars have long been fascinated with the performance of Richard II on the eve of the Essex "rising"-an episode where the interface between drama and politics is particularly broad and responsive. 1 Yet notwithstanding the obvious interest of this performance, scholars need to accord at least as much attention to another occasion when the fate and intentions of the most powerful man in England under the throne intersected with a public theatrical performance. The episode also tells us much about the intersection of elite and popular politics in the commercial theater, the cultural dynamics of the duke of Buckingham's career and the early Stuart regime, and the reception and appropriation of Shakespeare's plays immediately after his death.