Everyman and Mankind are morality plays which mark the turn of the medieval period to the early modern, with their focus on the individual. Everyman follows a man's journey towards death and his efforts to secure himself a life thereafter, whilst Mankind shows a man battling with temptation and sin, often with great humour. Both texts are modernised here and edited to the highest standards of scholarship, with full on-page commentaries giving the depth of information and insight associated with all Arden editions. The comprehensive, illustrated introduction...
Everyman and Mankind are morality plays which mark the turn of the medieval period to the early modern, with their focus on the individu...
On 19 April 1621, a woman named Elizabeth Sawyer was hanged at Tyburn. Her story was on the bookstalls within days and within weeks was adapted for the stage as The Witch of Edmonton. The devil stalks Edmonton in the shape of a large black dog and, just as Elizabeth Sawyer makes her demonic pact, the newlywed Frank Thorney enters into his own dark bargain in the shape of a second, bigamous marriage. Torn between sympathy for Sawyer and Thorney and a clear-eyed assessment of their crimes, the play was the finest and most nuanced treatment of witchcraft that the stage would see for...
On 19 April 1621, a woman named Elizabeth Sawyer was hanged at Tyburn. Her story was on the bookstalls within days and within weeks was adapted for th...
The Island Princess is a tragicomic romance set in the Spice Islands of Indonesia. Fletcher rewrites Shakespeare's The Tempest through the encounter of Islam and Christianity and the fierce European competition for wealth at the farthest reaches of empire. The play also stages the degeneration of religious tolerance into fanaticism. This ground-breaking edition explores the play in its gendered, political, social and religious contexts whilst also finding its resonances for a twenty-first century audience. The critical introduction and on-page commentary notes create an...
The Island Princess is a tragicomic romance set in the Spice Islands of Indonesia. Fletcher rewrites Shakespeare's The Tempest throug...
A major new edition of Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, an outstanding landmark of Elizabethan drama. In its time, it quickly became a box office success and probably inspired Shakespeare to write Hamlet, as it contains a ghost, murders that demand revenge and a hero that hesitates and contemplates suicide. As a revenge tragedy, it set up the salient features of a dramatic genre that would last decades. Its hero, the aged Marshall of Spain Hieronimo, whose son is murdered at night, soon transcended the play and became the standard stage representation of grief, rhetorical...
A major new edition of Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, an outstanding landmark of Elizabethan drama. In its time, it quickly became a box ...
Philaster is a tragicomedy by Beaumont and Fletcher which has much in common with Shakespeare's late plays such as The Winter's Tale. Set in a fictionalized Sicily, it has the complex plot of love, disguise and the threat of death much loved by early modern theatre-goers.
This edition provides an authoritative, modernized text by a leading scholar with detailed on-page commentary notes giving readers a deeper understanding of the play. The comprehensive, illustrated introduction discusses Philaster from a performance perspective as well as its relation to Shakespearean...
Philaster is a tragicomedy by Beaumont and Fletcher which has much in common with Shakespeare's late plays such as The Winter's Tale. Set in...
The Duchess of Malfi is one of the major tragedies of the early modern period and remains popular in the theatre as well as in the classroom. The story of the Duchess's secret marriage and the cruel revenge of her brothers has fascinated and appalled audiences for centuries.
This new Arden edition offers readers a comprehensive, illustrated introduction to the play's historical, critical and performance history. The text is modernised and edited to the highest scholarly standards, with textual notes and commentary notes on the same page...
The Duchess of Malfi is one of the major tragedies of the early modern period and remains popular in the theatre as well as in the c...
Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry is a Jacobean closet drama by Elizabeth Tanfield Cary. First published in 1613, it was the first work by a woman to be published under her real name. Never performed during Cary's lifetime, and apparently never intended for performance, the Senecan revenge tragedy tells the story of Mariam, the second wife of Herod. The play exposes and explores the themes of sex, divorce, betrayal, murder, and Jewish society under Herod's tyrannous rule. The comprehensive, illustrated introduction discusses the play in the context of closet drama,...
Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry is a Jacobean closet drama by Elizabeth Tanfield Cary. First published in 1613, it was the first ...
This is a fully modernized, annotated edition of John Ford's controversial tragedy of sibling incest and complex revenge plots. As with all Arden editions, it features detailed on-page commentary notes to help the reader understand and appreciate the play both in performance and as a many layered literary text. The comprehensive introduction offers a wealth of critical and contextual information and explores the controversial theme of incest from an early modern perspective. Editor Sonia Massai reveals the startling originality of the play, which is far more than a dark rewriting of...
This is a fully modernized, annotated edition of John Ford's controversial tragedy of sibling incest and complex revenge plots. As with all Arden e...
The Duchess of Malfi is one of the major tragedies of the early modern period and remains popular in the theatre as well as in the classroom. The story of the Duchess's secret marriage and the cruel revenge of her brothers has fascinated and appalled audiences for centuries. This new Arden edition offers readers a comprehensive, illustrated introduction to the play's historical, critical and performance history. The text is modernised and edited to the highest scholarly standards, with textual notes and commentary notes on the same page for ease of reference. This is the lead title in the...
The Duchess of Malfi is one of the major tragedies of the early modern period and remains popular in the theatre as well as in the classroom. The stor...
A Jovial Crew, or the Merry Beggars, is a comedy about four noble lovers who join the beggar community for a pastoral life of dance and song. Or is it? Whilst maintaining its unremitting good humour, A Jovial Crew shows that the literary depiction of beggar life, and real beggar life, are profoundly different. Daily aspects of life in the beggar world - poverty, dirt, licentiousness - come as a surprise to the well-born, who are ultimately led to question their own values.
The last production mounted before theatres were closed for the English Civil War, A...
A Jovial Crew, or the Merry Beggars, is a comedy about four noble lovers who join the beggar community for a pastoral life of dance and ...
