Twenty-two leading experts on early modern drama collaborate in this volume

to explore three closely interconnected research questions. To what extent did

playwrights represent dramatis personae in their entertainments as forming, or

failing to form, communal groupings? How far were theatrical productions likely

to weld, or separate, different communal groupings within their target audiences?

And how might such bondings or oppositions among spectators have tallied with

the community-making or -breaking on stage? Chapters in Part One respond...