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Officiële naam: Bradbrook, Muriel Clara
Geboortedatum: 1909-04-27
Overlijdensdatum: 1993-06-11
Geslacht: female
Nationaliteit: UK
Plaats van overlijden: Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, UK
Woonplaatsen: Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, UK
Opleiding: Cambridge University (Girton College)
Oldershaw Academy, Wallasey, England
Hutcheson’s Grammar School, Glasgow
Beroepen: academic (Girton College ∙ Cambridge)
literary scholar
Shakespeare scholar
Professor of English
Organisaties: Modern Language Association of America (honorary member)
Prijzen en onderscheidingen: Pragnell Award (1992)
Korte biografie: M.C. (Muriel Clara) Bradbrook was educated at Hutcheson’s Girls’ School, Glasgow, and Oldershaw High School (now The Oldershaw Academy) in Wallasey, England. In 1927, she entered Cambridge University, Girton College, where she read English and graduated with First Class honors. She remained at Girton as a Carlisle Scholar, and later as an Ottilie Hancock Research Fellow, and earned her PhD in 1933. In 1936, after a year at Oxford University, she return to Girton College and joined the faculty as Lecturer in English and Fellow. She rose to become the first woman professor of English at Cambridge University. During World War II, she worked in in London for the Board of Trade, and in the 1950s was a scholar-in-residence at the Folger Library in Washington, D.C., and at the Huntington Library in California. She published some 17 books on Shakespeare and the Elizabethans, as well as influential literary criticism on authors including Ibsen and Conrad. Two of her most acclaimed books were The Rise of the Common Player (1962) and Shakespeare the Craftsman (1969). She served as Mistress of Girton in 1968-1976, and also wrote a history of the college, That Infidel Place (1969).

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The Growth and Structure of Elizabethan Comedy door M. C. Bradbrook

[The Growth and Structure of Elizabethan Comedy] - M. C. Bradbrook
Originally Published in 1955, this textbook is aimed at the English Student, but having said that it starts off strongly with a good introduction and three general chapters on Elizabethan comedy before Shakespeare. Good points are made about the use of language, the development of plays through the tradition of rhetoric, the development of comedy from early Tudor times and the context in which plays were performed.

Part II takes the reader through the playwrights in reasonable chronological order ending with Shakespeare and reasons why he stood above the others in the late sixteenth century. Shakespeare’s legacy now dominates what was a major evolution of artistic growth, but it wasn’t quite as clear cut as that in Tudor times and Bradbrook makes a good case for Shakespeare being a synthesis of what was happening. Other playwrights such as Lyly, Greene, Peele and Nash get due consideration. Part III again in roughly chronological order trots through contemporaries of Shakespeare and those that followed in the reign of King James. This is perhaps the weakest part of the book because any general themes are overtaken by the work of the individual playwrights. Dekker, Heywood, Jonson, Marston, Middleton, Fletcher, Day and Chapmen each get small sections where Bradbrook sums up their work and attempts to put them in context.

The book is more concerned with the texts of the plays as they have come down to us, rather than thoughts about actual performance, this is particularly noticeable in the third section. There is a chronological table of the plays as well as notes at the back of the book, overall I found this to be a good overview of the plays that were performed with some examples and pointers to those that are still worth reading. 3.5 stars… (meer)