Mulcaster

I started and dropped this blog several years ago, so now I’m updating it.  Originally I had the idea that I wanted to start a foundation devoted to the study of the rich but largely undocumented history of the performing arts in education.  I was planning to call it the Richard Mulcaster Foundation, after the headmaster of the Merchant Taylors’ School in Elizabethan London, because in his two books on pedagogy he devotes many chapters to instruction in the performing arts.  It was a good idea, but it needed a more persistent person than I or a focused team to get it off the ground, so I abandoned it.

This time is different.  I’ve finished a book, Good Behavior and Audacity: Humanist Education, Playacting, and a Generation of Genius, and I’m looking to get it published.   I’ve started developing workshops and presentations about the enormous amount of performing arts and physical rhetoric (“actio”- acting) in Shakespeare’s education.

I’ll be updating this blog monthly.

In the meantime, back when I first started my research I made an attempt at updating some of Mulcaster’s writings on education.  Because of his ornate and discursive style it was a beastly task, but lest my work go completely to waste I’ve put it into a pdf below.  I’ll also pull from it in future posts.

About Richard Mulcaster