Thomas Platter the Younger
Thomas Platter the Younger (c. 24 July 1574 – 4 December 1628)[1] was a Swiss-born physician, traveller and diarist, the son of the humanist Thomas Platter the Elder.
The foremost record of Platter's life is the journal he kept, written in German[2], between around 1595 and 1600. It details his life as a medical student in Montpellier and his later travels in France, Spain, Flanders, and England. The diary supplies detail on many aspects of late sixteenth century European culture: medical education (including dissections), street and carnival life in Barcelona, European theatre, and the practicalities of the slave trade[1].
Perhaps the most studied[3] section of Platter's diary is his account of a 1599 trip to London with his older half-brother, Felix Platter, including a visit on 21 September, "at about two o'clock", to the Globe Theatre. Platter saw an early production of Julius Caesar: his account provides Shakespeare scholars with evidence for the dating of that play.[4].
[edit] References
- ^ a b Jennifer Speake, Literature of Travel and Exploration, Taylor and Francis 2003, pp 967-8
- ^ William Driver Howarth and Jan Clark, French Theatre in the Neo-classical Era, 1550-1789, Cambridge University Press 1997 p45.
- ^ J. R. Mulryne and Margaret Shrewring, Shakespeare's Globe Rebuilt, Cambridge Press 1997, p.190; cited at http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/Depts/HUA/TT/Globe/app2.html
- ^ Marvin Spevack, Introduction to Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, New Cambridge Shakespeare (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p.3-4)
