Shakespeare, Spencer and the Matter of Britain examines the work of two of the most important English Renaissance authors in terms of the cultural, social and political contexts of early modern Britain. Andrew Hadfield demonstrates that the poetry of Edmund Spenser and the plays of William Shakespeare demand to be read in terms of an expanding Elizabethan and Jacobean culture in which a dominant English identity had to come to terms with the Irish, Scots and Welsh who were now also subjects of the crown.

This is the first study to explore the relationship between Christianity, Judaism and Islam in the Early Modern period. Contributors debate the complicated terms in which these 'Religions of the Book' interacted. The collection illuminates this area of European culture from the late Middle Ages to the end of the Seventeenth century.