For many years Middleton's "A Game at Chess" was more notorious than read, considered rather a phenomenon of theatrical history than a pre-eminent piece of dramatic writing. "A Game at Chess" was a nine days' wonder, an exceptional play of King James' reign on account of its unprecedented representation of matters of state usually forbidden on the stage. The King's Men performed the play uninterruptedly between 5th and 14th August, 1624 at their Globe Theatre, attracting large audiences, before the Privy Council closed the theatre by the King's command. More recently, growing interest in the...

Renaissance Papers is a collection of the best scholarly essays submitted each year to the Southeastern Renaissance Conference. Organized and sponsored in the early 1950s by Duke University and the universities of South Carolina and North Carolina, the annual meeting is now hosted by various colleges and universities across the southeastern United States. The conference accepts papers on all subjects relating to the Renaissance -- music, art, history, literature, etc. -- from scholars all over North America and Europe. This is the forty-seventh volume of Renaissance Papers. It includes...

Scholarly interest in The Book of Sir Thomas More has concentrated on the issue of Shakespeare's contribution to its revision. The play, which concerns the life of Sir Thomas More, was written in 1593 4, subjected to censorship by the Master of the Revels and revised by a group of playwrights which probably included Shakespeare. 148 lines have been claimed as Shakespeare's, and these were the focus of a collection of essays edited by A. W. Pollard in 1923. The range of topics in this volume is much wider than that of the 1923 collection, taking in the problems presented by the play as a...