The Elizabethan at the public playhouse (1575-1616)

This item was digitized by the Internet Archive. Thesis (M.A.)--Boston UniversityLittle has been written about this phase of stage history, however, the topic is an important one, for the audience played an important part in determining the content, technique, and theme of not only, Shakespeare's works but, those of his contemporaries as well. A knowledge of the people who attended Shakespeare's plays, sheds light upon vital questions of staging and interpretation of his plays. The plan of this paper is to approach the subject from three points of view: first, the relation between the audience and the playhouse; second, the audience, itself, and finally the relation between spectator and writer, actor and stage manager. The first, discusses the playhouse, dealing with aspects such as admission, refreshment, the jig, and so on, in the order in which they would be encountered by the playgoer, and concludes with a discussion of Elizabethan behavior at the play. The second portion permits a closer examination of the audience, itself. The predominance of the middle class, both in civic life and at the theatre, has been brought out. The kind of person who attended the play, the student, the apprentice and the others; and the evidence, both for and against, the presence of women at the theatre are discussed. The "type" characters who attended the theatre, as Elizabethan satirists saw them are reviewed, although the actual light they cast on the nature of the audience is slight. As Harboge reminds us, the audience is never a composite of caricatures but a cross-section of society in general. The final portion of the paper deals with Elizabethan tastes and preferences in regard to plays, dramatists, actors, and stage business. Elizabethan delight in the sensational is discussed, as well as realism in the Elizabethan theatre. By way of conclusion, a discussion of the attitude of the playwrights, first, Shakespeare, and then his contemporaries, towards the audience for whom they wrote is initiated. We are surprised to learn that even in this early period in theatrical history some attempts of advertising existed. An early form of the playbill is known to be in use; the playhouse flag flew from the tiring house tower on paydays, and possibly, the actors themselves may have gone through the town, assembling a crowd with drum and trumpet and then reading an announcement of their play. The scale of admission varied, but translated into present day values, seems fairly comparable to the admission paid to attend a motion picture house. The percentage of the total population who attended the theatre is surprisingly small. It has been estimated that about two from every fifteen persons were spectators. The reasons for this small percentage were numerous. The size of the audience is a controversial question. Best scholarly evidence places the average attendance at an average sized theatre, as the Rose, between 1,054 and 1,557 persons, and the weekly total for the city of London at about 15,000 perpons. The performance, itself, was far different from anything we might encounter in this present day. The behavior of the audience would seem odd; the facilities of the theatre most uncomfortable; and the vigorous reactions of the spectators most alarming, when we come to express an critical opinion on the behavior of the audience, it is difficult to tell in what degree they are to be censured in this rerpect. However, if we linger too long on this point, we are apt to give it undue stress. We are so indebted to the age for the great literary land marks left us in the form of Shakespeare's plays that the behavior of the spectators seems relatively unimportant. The bulk of London's population was tradesmen, and craftsmen, attracted there by the business opportunities stimulated by the presence of the court. The middle class predominated at the theatre as well, a large percentage of the audience were apprentices and students. There were few women at the play, contemporary satirists have left pen sketches of characters as the gull, the traveller, the dandy, and the gallant, all familiar figures at the theatre. Many contemporary references to the behavior of the apprentices exist. Beaumont gives us a picture of the citizen, his wife, and his apprentice in "The Knight of the Burning Pestle". The audience was a colorful group of people, reflecting the likes and dislikes of middle class society in Elizabethan England. Historical plays of all kinds were favorites of the Elizabethans. The chronicle play, citing the history of England's kings, appealed to their patriotism and pride in country. Plays of action and knightly adventure pleased them end tragedies, the more violent, the better, attracted many auditors to the playhouse. sensationalism on the stage, representations of murders, executions, add similar displays which would find little popularity in modern days...were relished. Most popular of all were plays glorifying the artisan and apprentice as "The Life and Death of Jack Straw." Satires, particularly when middle class ideals and practices were the victim, were very unpopular. This explains Jonson's unpopularity except in those instances where he is careful to satirize traits or characteristics of mankind in general. The plays "Volpone" and the "Alchemist" were successful, and his "Bartholomew Pair" an example of a deliberate attempt to give the audience what they want, with very successful results, although his contempt for his audience is very thinly veiled in the prologue of the latter. Shakespeare was popular with all classes. Dekker and Reywood, were proponents of the middle class, particularly, Reywood. His plays are filled with bits of philosophy, characteristic of the middle class, and reveal a keen insight and understanding of them. It is easy to see why the "Knight of the Burning Pestle" of Beaumont, would not appeal to the audience of the public playhouse. Middleton and Brome were not able to interest middle class spectators. Middleton's "Michaelmas Term" is typical of the sharp and biting satire which proved so unpopular. Ryd's "Spanish Tragedy" remained a favorite well towards the close of this period, and the plays of Marlowe with his "mighty line" and his magnificent hero-villains, as in "Tambuerlaine" were equally favored. On the whole, the playwright maintained a kindly attitude towards his audience as long as his plays were received favorably. It is only when he is embittered by past failures, or the failure of the work of a fellow dramatist, that we read satirical comments on the inability of the audience to judge judiciously or to appreciate the best in dramatic work. Shakespeare rarely criticizes them, nor does Reywood. Jonson was most contemptuous of his public, but was aware of what qualities would please them as we have seen in "Bartholomew Fair". The audience of Shakespeare's day was a fair cross-section of Elizabethan urban ife, and when we limit ourselves to the audience at the public playhouse, it becomes a cross section of middle class society. An understanding of this fascinating group of people, enriches our understanding and appreciation of the Elizabethan drama, and in turn, our understanding and comprehension of Elizabethan England.https://archive.org/details/elizabethanatpub00hal

Meeting the challenge of providing high-quality continuing professional development for teachers: The Wellcome CPD Challenge Pilot Delivery Report

Governments worldwide view teacher professional development as a route to improved teaching, and thereby improved educational outcomes. However, in England, teachers typically participate in less professional development than teachers in other high-performing countries and appear to access a lower proportion of subject-specific compared to generic professional development. Therefore there is a strong case for improved access to, and engagement with, teacher professional development. In recent years, the government in England has implemented large-scale teacher professional development initiatives, but there is limited evidence of sustained change towards a goal of all teachers being able to participate in high-quality professional development throughout their careers. The Wellcome CPD Challenge, a three-year pilot, was commissioned by Wellcome alongside an external evaluation, to understand whether and how an entitlement to teacher continuing professional development (CPD) with defined criteria related to the quality and quantity of professional development teachers participate in, could be implemented in schools. The CPD Challenge was managed and delivered by staff from Sheffield Institute of Education, part of Sheffield Hallam University, working in partnership with Learn Sheffield. The evaluation was carried out by CFE Research. Forty schools were set the challenge of meeting defined criteria relating to the quality and quantity of teacher professional development. By meeting these criteria, it was hoped that all teachers would participate in a transformational amount of high-quality professional development directly relevant to their practice and contexts, with the criteria acting as ambitious but achievable targets, independent of schools’ starting points. The CPD Challenge criteria were defined as: • Continuing professional development (CPD) meets the needs of the individual teacher and is predominantly focussed on subject-specific development; • CPD is high quality and aligns to the Department for Education’s (2016) standard for teachers’ professional development; • Every teacher participates in a minimum 35 hours of CPD annually. The schools selected to participate in the CPD Challenge included secondary, primary and special schools, representing a mix of school types and contexts. Each school designated a ‘CPD Challenge Champion’ to lead change in professional development practices and to support operational aspects of the project in their schools. The Champions were essential to the project’s success: they were the drivers of change in schools and teachers’ main point of contact with the CPD Challenge. CPD Challenge Champions were supported through schools’ briefings which brought the group together, and regular contact with a CPD Challenge Facilitator, external to the school. Schools’ briefings enabled Champions to engage with and consider research evidence about professional development and related issues, to reflect on their own practices and to learn from each other. The Facilitators were vital in supporting the Champions to fulfil their roles, through dynamic and flexible support. The Facilitators variously acted as sounding board, mentor and coach, problem solver, critical friend, and a link to other schools, enabling Champions to manage both developmental and logistical aspects of their role. Each school received an incentive payment as a recognition of the time needed to engage in the CPD Challenge. This was not ring-fenced to activities relating to teacher professional development, and it was not expected that, for most schools, the funding would be sufficient to enable meeting the CPD Challenge criteria. A range of activities, initiatives and practices were trialled, reviewed and revised in the schools. These included: • development of shared understandings of professional development, for example through school-specific definitions of professional development and re-designation of meetings and other ‘administrative’ tasks as opportunities for development; • new or adapted whole-school approaches for professional development planning, delivery and evaluation, such as explicit linking of professional development to teacher appraisal and performance management and systems for tracking engagement in, and the impact of, professional development; • new approaches to individualised and subject-specific professional development, including teacher research projects; subscriptions to subject associations; the use of departmental time for developing and sharing subject-focussed practice, and the identification and deployment of in-school expertise for the leadership of professional development. Not surprisingly, the COVID-19 pandemic, which began in the second year of the CPD Challenge, had a significant impact on schools’ ability to participate in the project and the ways their teachers engaged with professional development. However, as the practicalities of dealing with the pandemic became embedded in day-to-day practice, school leaders adapted their plans to remote learning solutions. Overall, it appears that the changes schools had made to their professional development practices before the pandemic were largely resilient to its impact. Further, the use of online learning environments, and teachers’ increasing confidence in working within these, opened up some opportunities for more flexible and individualised professional development. Where schools made less progress towards meeting the CPD Challenge criteria, this tended to derive from factors such as competing priorities in school. These limited the CPD Challenge Champions’ ability to engage with support, and school leaders’ and teachers’ ability to maintain a focus on the potential positive impacts of participation in the project. However, many schools experiencing the most challenging of circumstances, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic, were able to adapt their approaches to professional development in response to those competing priorities and changing external conditions. The levels of commitment shown by the schools in the CPD Challenge indicate that there is an appetite for system-wide and school-level change in approaches to professional development. The changes put in place by schools led to increases in the quantity and quality of professional development teachers engaged in, and to fundamental shifts in schools’ professional development cultures. Our experience, complementing those of the evaluation, indicates that these changes are sustainable in the long term. Our findings suggest that, given appropriate support for school leaders, schools are able to meet an entitlement to the provision of high-quality professional development (where quality is clearly defined) for teachers at all stages of their careers, and that such an entitlement provides a focus for improvement in schools’ practices around professional development. We offer these recommendations for school leaders and policy makers: • all schools should appoint a senior leader with explicit responsibility for leading professional development, who is given support to develop their understanding of professional development, to plan for, lead and reflect on change and to engage staff in these changes; • all school staff should participate in building a shared understanding of the purpose and outcomes of sustained high-quality professional development, moving away from ideas of professional development as attendance at external courses and towards shared ownership of professional development as an ongoing process of learning through multiple activities; • school leaders can embed small changes in practice to balance and align school development objectives with teachers’ individual learning needs, such as redefining the purpose and content of staff meetings; linking professional development with performance management or appraisals, and developing systems of teacher-led inquiry. Finally, we recommend that the government implements an entitlement to professional development for teachers at all stages of their careers

Interleukin-4 activated macrophages mediate immunity to filarial helminth infection by sustaining CCR3-dependent eosinophilia

Eosinophils are effectors in immunity to tissue helminths but also induce allergic immunopathology. Mechanisms of eosinophilia in non-mucosal tissues during infection remain unresolved. Here we identify a pivotal function of tissue macrophages (Mϕ) in eosinophil anti-helminth immunity using a BALB/c mouse intra-peritoneal Brugia malayi filarial infection model. Eosinophilia, via C-C motif chemokine receptor (CCR)3, was necessary for immunity as CCR3 and eosinophil impairments rendered mice susceptible to chronic filarial infection. Post-infection, peritoneal Mϕ populations proliferated and became alternatively-activated (AAMϕ). Filarial AAMϕ development required adaptive immunity and interleukin-4 receptor-alpha. Depletion of Mϕ prior to infection suppressed eosinophilia and facilitated worm survival. Add back of filarial AAMϕ in Mϕ-depleted mice recapitulated a vigorous eosinophilia. Transfer of filarial AAMϕ into Severe-Combined Immune Deficient mice mediated immunological resistance in an eosinophil-dependent manner. Exogenous IL-4 delivery recapitulated tissue AAMϕ expansions, sustained eosinophilia and mediated immunological resistance in Mϕ-intact SCID mice. Co-culturing Brugia with filarial AAMϕ and/or filarial-recruited eosinophils confirmed eosinophils as the larvicidal cell type. Our data demonstrates that IL-4/IL-4Rα activated AAMϕ orchestrate eosinophil immunity to filarial tissue helminth infection

Saccadic Eye Movement Abnormalities in Children with Epilepsy

Childhood onset epilepsy is associated with disrupted developmental integration of sensorimotor and cognitive functions that contribute to persistent neurobehavioural comorbidities. The role of epilepsy and its treatment on the development of functional integration of motor and cognitive domains is unclear. Oculomotor tasks can probe neurophysiological and neurocognitive mechanisms vulnerable to developmental disruptions by epilepsy-related factors. The study involved 26 patients and 48 typically developing children aged 8–18 years old who performed a prosaccade and an antisaccade task. Analyses compared medicated chronic epilepsy patients and unmedicated controlled epilepsy patients to healthy control children on saccade latency, accuracy and dynamics, errors and correction rate, and express saccades. Patients with medicated chronic epilepsy had impaired and more variable processing speed, reduced accuracy, increased peak velocity and a greater number of inhibitory errors, younger unmedicated patients also showed deficits in error monitoring. Deficits were related to reported behavioural problems in patients. Epilepsy factors were significant predictors of oculomotor functions. An earlier age at onset predicted reduced latency of prosaccades and increased express saccades, and the typical relationship between express saccades and inhibitory errors was absent in chronic patients, indicating a persistent reduction in tonic cortical inhibition and aberrant cortical connectivity. In contrast, onset in later childhood predicted altered antisaccade dynamics indicating disrupted neurotransmission in frontoparietal and oculomotor networks with greater demand on inhibitory control. The observed saccadic abnormalities are consistent with a dysmaturation of subcortical-cortical functional connectivity and aberrant neurotransmission. Eye movements could be used to monitor the impact of epilepsy on neurocognitive development and help assess the risk for poor neurobehavioural outcomes

A prospective prostate cancer screening programme for men with pathogenic variants in mismatch repair genes (IMPACT): initial results from an international prospective study.

Funder: Victorian Cancer AgencyFunder: NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research CentreFunder: Cancer Research UKFunder: Cancer Council TasmaniaFunder: Instituto de Salud Carlos IIIFunder: Cancer AustraliaFunder: NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research CentreFunder: Fundación Científica de la Asociación Española Contra el CáncerFunder: Cancer Council South AustraliaFunder: Swedish Cancer SocietyFunder: NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research CentreFunder: Institut Català de la SalutFunder: Cancer Council VictoriaFunder: Prostate Cancer Foundation of AustraliaFunder: National Institutes of HealthBACKGROUND: Lynch syndrome is a rare familial cancer syndrome caused by pathogenic variants in the mismatch repair genes MLH1, MSH2, MSH6, or PMS2, that cause predisposition to various cancers, predominantly colorectal and endometrial cancer. Data are emerging that pathogenic variants in mismatch repair genes increase the risk of early-onset aggressive prostate cancer. The IMPACT study is prospectively assessing prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening in men with germline mismatch repair pathogenic variants. Here, we report the usefulness of PSA screening, prostate cancer incidence, and tumour characteristics after the first screening round in men with and without these germline pathogenic variants. METHODS: The IMPACT study is an international, prospective study. Men aged 40-69 years without a previous prostate cancer diagnosis and with a known germline pathogenic variant in the MLH1, MSH2, or MSH6 gene, and age-matched male controls who tested negative for a familial pathogenic variant in these genes were recruited from 34 genetic and urology clinics in eight countries, and underwent a baseline PSA screening. Men who had a PSA level higher than 3·0 ng/mL were offered a transrectal, ultrasound-guided, prostate biopsy and a histopathological analysis was done. All participants are undergoing a minimum of 5 years' annual screening. The primary endpoint was to determine the incidence, stage, and pathology of screening-detected prostate cancer in carriers of pathogenic variants compared with non-carrier controls. We used Fisher's exact test to compare the number of cases, cancer incidence, and positive predictive values of the PSA cutoff and biopsy between carriers and non-carriers and the differences between disease types (ie, cancer vs no cancer, clinically significant cancer vs no cancer). We assessed screening outcomes and tumour characteristics by pathogenic variant status. Here we present results from the first round of PSA screening in the IMPACT study. This study is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT00261456, and is now closed to accrual. FINDINGS: Between Sept 28, 2012, and March 1, 2020, 828 men were recruited (644 carriers of mismatch repair pathogenic variants [204 carriers of MLH1, 305 carriers of MSH2, and 135 carriers of MSH6] and 184 non-carrier controls [65 non-carriers of MLH1, 76 non-carriers of MSH2, and 43 non-carriers of MSH6]), and in order to boost the sample size for the non-carrier control groups, we randomly selected 134 non-carriers from the BRCA1 and BRCA2 cohort of the IMPACT study, who were included in all three non-carrier cohorts. Men were predominantly of European ancestry (899 [93%] of 953 with available data), with a mean age of 52·8 years (SD 8·3). Within the first screening round, 56 (6%) men had a PSA concentration of more than 3·0 ng/mL and 35 (4%) biopsies were done. The overall incidence of prostate cancer was 1·9% (18 of 962; 95% CI 1·1-2·9). The incidence among MSH2 carriers was 4·3% (13 of 305; 95% CI 2·3-7·2), MSH2 non-carrier controls was 0·5% (one of 210; 0·0-2·6), MSH6 carriers was 3·0% (four of 135; 0·8-7·4), and none were detected among the MLH1 carriers, MLH1 non-carrier controls, and MSH6 non-carrier controls. Prostate cancer incidence, using a PSA threshold of higher than 3·0 ng/mL, was higher in MSH2 carriers than in MSH2 non-carrier controls (4·3% vs 0·5%; p=0·011) and MSH6 carriers than MSH6 non-carrier controls (3·0% vs 0%; p=0·034). The overall positive predictive value of biopsy using a PSA threshold of 3·0 ng/mL was 51·4% (95% CI 34·0-68·6), and the overall positive predictive value of a PSA threshold of 3·0 ng/mL was 32·1% (20·3-46·0). INTERPRETATION: After the first screening round, carriers of MSH2 and MSH6 pathogenic variants had a higher incidence of prostate cancer compared with age-matched non-carrier controls. These findings support the use of targeted PSA screening in these men to identify those with clinically significant prostate cancer. Further annual screening rounds will need to confirm these findings. FUNDING: Cancer Research UK, The Ronald and Rita McAulay Foundation, the National Institute for Health Research support to Biomedical Research Centres (The Institute of Cancer Research and Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust; Oxford; Manchester and the Cambridge Clinical Research Centre), Mr and Mrs Jack Baker, the Cancer Council of Tasmania, Cancer Australia, Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia, Cancer Council of Victoria, Cancer Council of South Australia, the Victorian Cancer Agency, Cancer Australia, Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia, Asociación Española Contra el Cáncer (AECC), the Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER), the Institut Català de la Salut, Autonomous Government of Catalonia, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, National Institutes of Health National Cancer Institute, Swedish Cancer Society, General Hospital in Malmö Foundation for Combating Cancer

Identification of a BRCA2-Specific modifier locus at 6p24 related to breast cancer risk

Common genetic variants contribute to the observed variation in breast cancer risk for BRCA2 mutation carriers; those known to date have all been found through population-based genome-wide association studies (GWAS). To comprehensively identify breast cancer risk modifying loci for BRCA2 mutation carriers, we conducted a deep replication of an ongoing GWAS discovery study. Using the ranked P-values of the breast cancer associations with the imputed genotype of 1.4 M SNPs, 19,029 SNPs were selected and designed for inclusion on a custom Illumina array that included a total of 211,155 SNPs as part of a multi-consortial project. DNA samples from 3,881 breast cancer affected and 4,330 unaffected BRCA2 mutation carriers from 47 studies belonging to the Consortium of Investigators of Modifiers of BRCA1/2 were genotyped and available for analysis. We replicated previously reported breast cancer susceptibility alleles in these BRCA2 mutation carriers and for several regions (including FGFR2, MAP3K1, CDKN2A/B, and PTHLH) identified SNPs that have stronger evidence of association than those previously published. We also identified a novel susceptibility allele at 6p24 that was inversely associated with risk in BRCA2 mutation carriers (rs9348512; per allele HR = 0.85, 95% CI 0.80-0.90, P = 3.9×10−8). This SNP was not associated with breast cancer risk either in the general population or in BRCA1 mutation carriers. The locus lies within a region containing TFAP2A, which encodes a transcriptional activation protein that interacts with several tumor suppressor genes. This report identifies the first breast cancer risk locus specific to a BRCA2 mutation background. This comprehensive update of novel and previously reported breast cancer susceptibility loci contributes to the establishment of a panel of SNPs that modify breast cancer risk in BRCA2 mutation carriers. This panel may have clinical utility for women with BRCA2 mutations weighing options for medical prevention of breast cancer

Psychosocial impact of undergoing prostate cancer screening for men with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations.

OBJECTIVES: To report the baseline results of a longitudinal psychosocial study that forms part of the IMPACT study, a multi-national investigation of targeted prostate cancer (PCa) screening among men with a known pathogenic germline mutation in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes. PARTICPANTS AND METHODS: Men enrolled in the IMPACT study were invited to complete a questionnaire at collaborating sites prior to each annual screening visit. The questionnaire included sociodemographic characteristics and the following measures: the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), Impact of Event Scale (IES), 36-item short-form health survey (SF-36), Memorial Anxiety Scale for Prostate Cancer, Cancer Worry Scale-Revised, risk perception and knowledge. The results of the baseline questionnaire are presented. RESULTS: A total of 432 men completed questionnaires: 98 and 160 had mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, respectively, and 174 were controls (familial mutation negative). Participants' perception of PCa risk was influenced by genetic status. Knowledge levels were high and unrelated to genetic status. Mean scores for the HADS and SF-36 were within reported general population norms and mean IES scores were within normal range. IES mean intrusion and avoidance scores were significantly higher in BRCA1/BRCA2 carriers than in controls and were higher in men with increased PCa risk perception. At the multivariate level, risk perception contributed more significantly to variance in IES scores than genetic status. CONCLUSION: This is the first study to report the psychosocial profile of men with BRCA1/BRCA2 mutations undergoing PCa screening. No clinically concerning levels of general or cancer-specific distress or poor quality of life were detected in the cohort as a whole. A small subset of participants reported higher levels of distress, suggesting the need for healthcare professionals offering PCa screening to identify these risk factors and offer additional information and support to men seeking PCa screening