An Annotated Edition of Joshua Barnes' the Academie, Or, the Cambridge Dunns: With an Introductory Essay on the Place of Joshua Barnes in Seventeenth-Century English Theatre

This is an annotated edition of Joshua Barnes' "The Academie", or "The Cambridge Dunns", which shows Barnes to occupy a significant position in the history of English drama. Barnes' theatrical methods are modern; what keeps his play superficially old-fashioned is what makes it exciting: the demands university performance put upon it. In London, actresses possessed the stage and had done so for many years; in Cambridge actors were all male, audiences mostly male, and interests correspondingly masculine. It is the all-male nature of this production that permits the play's highly-charged banter and invigorates its raucous sexuality.