‘We should be colliers’: Coal, contagion, and the Elizabethan theatre

Abstract

Both colliers and the coals they carried were a familiar feature of life in early modern England. Mined coal and manufactured charcoal fueled a significant proportion of contemporary domestic and industrial activity, including theatrical production. Most early modern players and playwrights almost certainly relied on coal to heat their homes and prepare their meals, as many playgoers would have done. In addition, playhouses and companies are likely to have used coal in various pyrotechnic effects, continuing and adapting methods for the theatrical production of fire that were inherited from medieval works such as the Coventry Corpus Christi cycle, which was itself staged regularly for much of Elizabeth I’s reign. Such practices of consumption and production were far from new, with debates about coal burning and its effects dating back at least to ancient Rome. However, both coal and its purveyors attracted scrutiny in Elizabethan England as a result of wider social developments that generated or exacerbated energy demands and dependencies