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 a...
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 White Devil is one of the most-studied of non-Shakespearean Renaissance plays. Its fundamental concerns resonate powerfully with a wide range of current critical interests. As a play centred on the life of a notorious woman, and a play that dramatises adultery, betrayal, and domestic violence, The White Devil has a great deal to tell us about representations of gender, sexuality, and sexual violence in the early modern period. It also closely engages issues of law and constitutes an extended meditation on courts and court politics and opens up vital questions about...
The White Devil is one of the most-studied of non-Shakespearean Renaissance plays. Its fundamental concerns resonate powerfully with a wide ...
The White Devil is one of the most-studied of non-Shakespearean Renaissance plays. Its fundamental concerns resonate powerfully with a wide range of current critical interests. As a play centred on the life of a notorious woman, and a play that dramatises adultery, betrayal, and domestic violence, The White Devil has a great deal to tell us about representations of gender, sexuality, and sexual violence in the early modern period. It also closely engages issues of law and constitutes an extended meditation on courts and court politics and opens up vital questions about...
The White Devil is one of the most-studied of non-Shakespearean Renaissance plays. Its fundamental concerns resonate powerfully with a wide ...
The Revenger’s Tragedy treads a line between macabre humour and moral commentary. Thomas Middleton’s aptly named play begins with a man called Vindice holding the skull of his dead fiancée and vowing to avenge her death. The tragedy that unfolds features complicated plot twists in which the licentious Duke and his corrupt family, who are guilty of rape, poisoning, and much more, become the victims of torture and murder. This edition offers a comprehensive analysis of diverse critical attitudes towards the play, with special attention to its authorship and its ambiguous theological...
The Revenger’s Tragedy treads a line between macabre humour and moral commentary. Thomas Middleton’s aptly named play begins with a man called Vin...
