A Companion to Renaissance Drama

This expansive, inter–disciplinary guide to Renaissance plays and the world they played to gives readers a colorful overview of England′s great dramatic age. In its pages, today′s best Renaissance scholars chart the cross–currents of belief and daily experience that illuminate the meaning of works by Marlowe, Jonson, Middleton or Webster, as it has changed over time, place and audience. They explain why the plays do or say what they do, and raise provocative possibilities of what the plays might have said to Tudor and Stuart playgoers by discussing values, attitudes, and the material conditions of performance, along with the lives and particular ideas of individual playwrights.

List of Illustrations. Notes on Contributors. Acknowledgements. Introduction: The Dramatic World of the Renaissance. (Arthur F. Kinney). Part One: The Drama′s World. 1. The Politics of Renaissance England . (Norman Jones). 2. Political Thought and the Theater, 1580–1630. (Annabel Patterson). 3. Religious Persuasions, C.1580–C.1620. (Lori Anne Ferrell). 4. Social Discourse and the Changing Economy. (Lee Beier). 5. London and Westminster. (Ian W. Archer). 6. Vagrancy. (William C. Carroll). 7. Family and Household. (Martin Ingram). 8. Travel and Trade. (William H. Sherman). 9. Everyday Custom and Popular Culture. (Michael Bristol). 10. Magic and Witchcraft. (Deborah Willis). Part Two: The World of Drama. 11. Play Houses. (Herbert Berry). 12. The Transmission of an English Renaissance Play–text. (Grace Ioppolo). 13. Playing Companies and Repertory. (Roslyn L. Knutson). 14. Must the Devil Appear?: Audiences, Actors, and Stage Business. (S. P. Cerasano). 15. "The Actors are Come Hither": Traveling Companies. (Peter H. Greenfield). 16. Jurisdiction of Theater and Censorship. (Richard Dutton). Part Three: Kinds of Drama. 17. Medieval and reformation Roots. (Raphael Falco). 18. The Academic Drama. (Robert S. Knapp). 19. "What revels are in Hand?": Performances in the Great Households. (Suzanne Westfall). 20. Progresses and Court Entertainments. (R. Malcolm Smuts). 21. Civic Drama. (Lawrence Manley). 22. Boy Companies and Private Theaters. (Michael Shapiro). 23. Revenge Tragedy. (Eugene D. Hill)]. 24. Staging the Malcontent in early Modern England. (Mark Thornton Burnett). 25. City Comedy. (John A. Twyning). 26. Domestic Tragedy: Private Life on the Public Stage. (Lena Cowen Orlin)]. 27. Romance and Tragicomedy. (Maurice Hunt). 28. Gendering the Stage. (Alison Findlay). 29. Closet Drama. (Marta Straznicky). Part Four: Dramatists. 30. Continental Influences. (Lawrence, F. Rhu). 31. Christopher Marlowe. (Emily C. Bartels). 32. Ben Jonson. (W. David Kay). 33. Sidney, Cary, Wroth. (Margaret Ferguson). 34. Thomas Middleton. (John Jowett). 35. Beaumont and Fletcher. (Lee Bliss). 36. Collaboration. (Philip C. McGuire). 37. John Webster. (Elli Abraham Shellist). 38. John Ford. (Mario DiGangi). Index.

Arthur F. Kinney is Copeland Professor of Literary History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Director of the Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies. He is the editor of A Companion to Renaissance Drama (Blackwell, 2002) and of the journal English Literary Renaissance . His other recent publications include Lies like Truth: Shakespeare, Macbeth, and the Cultural Moment (2001) and Shakespeare by Stages (Blackwell, 2002).

"This collection contains a wealth of information about the vast and rich domain of Renaissance drama. Always lively, the essays display state–of–the–art scholarship on the plays, the playwrights, the theater, and the culture of Early Modern England. It will be an indispensible scholarly resource for those interested in the entirety of the Renaissance theatrical world, an arena which, as this volume definitively confirms, encompassed a rich array of playmakers and theatrical forms." Jean Howard, Columbia University "Serious first–time readers of Renaissance drama, as well as veteran teachers looking for a credible source of current information, will likely find this substantial volume of great utility." Choice