Describes the staging practices, performance conditions and acting techniques of the period, focusing on five popular dramas: The Spanish Tragedy, Mucedorus, Edward II, Doctor Faustus and Titus Andronicus, as well as providing a comprehensive history of a variety of contemporary playhouse stages, performances, and players.

This new edition of the Companion provides updated information about the principal theaters, playwrights and plays of the most important period of English drama, from 1580-1642. Revised essays are included in chapters on theaters, dramaturgy, political plays, heroic plays, burlesque, comedy, tragedy, and drama produced during the reign of Charles I. Their references have been updated and the substantial biographical and bibliographical section has been expanded. First Edition Hb (1990): 0-521-34657-6 First Edition Pb (1990): 0-521-38662-4

Shakespeare's history plays have been performed in recent years more than ever before throughout Britain, North America, and Europe. This volume is an accessible introduction to Shakespeare's historical and classical plays. Comprehensive in scope, it offers chapters on the individual plays and accounts of the genre of the history play, Renaissance theories of history, and masques and pageants. It compares them with other European history plays, and includes an account of women's roles, genealogical tables and a list of principal and recurrent characters.

The New Inn is one of the most neglected of Jonson's plays which is now finding a new and appreciative audience. May be read, according to this Editor's introduction, as a tribute to Shakespeare, and as a belated recognition that the fantasies of romance contain profound truths. The spelling has been modernised and the text updated and corrected for this paperback edition. There is also a critical introduction, helpful appendices and a commentary which explains difficult or significant passages within the play.

This volume offers a description of early modern habits of writing and reading, of publication and stage performance, and of political and religious writing.

• An introduction to early modern English literature for students and general readers.
  
• Considers the ways in which early modern writers construct the past, recover and adapt classical genres, write about people and places, and tackle religious and secular controversies.
  
• Illustrated with a profusion of excerpts from early modern texts.
  
• Writers represented include More, Erasmus,...

This is a one volume, up-to-date collection of more than fifty wide-ranging essays which will inspire and guide students of the Renaissance and provide course leaders with a substantial and helpful frame of reference.

• Provides new perspectives on established texts.
  
• Orientates the new student, while providing advanced students with current and new directions.
  
• Pioneered by leading scholars.
  
• Occupies a unique niche in Renaissance studies.
  
• Illustrated with 12 single-page black and white prints.
...

This new edition of the Companion provides updated information about the principal theaters, playwrights and plays of the most important period of English drama, from 1580-1642. Revised essays are included in chapters on theaters, dramaturgy, political plays, heroic plays, burlesque, comedy, tragedy, and drama produced during the reign of Charles I. Their references have been updated and the substantial biographical and bibliographical section has been expanded. First Edition Hb (1990): 0-521-34657-6 First Edition Pb (1990): 0-521-38662-4

Shakespeare is the national poet of many nations besides his own, though a peculiarly subversive one in both east and west. This volume contains a score of essays by scholars from Britain, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Poland, Romania, Spain, Ukraine and the USA, written to show how the momentous changes of 1989 were mirrored in the way Shakespeare has been interpreted and produced. The collection offers a valuable record of what Shakespeare has meant in the modern world and some pointers to what he may mean in the future.