This is the second volume in Sources of Dramatic Theory. This volume includes the major theoretical writing on drama and theater from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Among the writers represented by their own essays or substantial extracts from longer works are: Voltaire, Diderot, Goldoni, Dr. Johnson, Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Hegel, and Coleridge. Many of the texts have been freshly translated for this volume and all have been newly annotated and introduced. Recurrent topics and allusions are traced by a system of cross-references.

The entertainments offered by Elizabethan courtiers to their Queen are a central part of the elaborate cult surrounding the figure of Elizabeth. Yet the fascinating literary texts written for these occasions have been comparatively neglected, despite years of growing interest in both -Gloriana- herself and the masques in general. This book presents an extended study of the entertainments by way of introduction to four of the actual texts. The general introduction examines the origins of the entertainments in court spectacles and pageants of the early Tudor period, and shows how they underline...