Edward IV (1599) was printed no less than six times up to 1626, and
was one of the best loved plays of the early modern period, but
this edition is the first since the 1870s. Controversy surrounds
every aspect of the play. Disputes over the ownership of the
inn-yard playhouse in which it was first played erupted into
violence during performances. The little known troop which first
acted Edward IV used it to challenge the domination of the two
principal companies. The play premiered at a moment when the
representation of medieval history in any format was coming under
the hostile scrutiny of the Elizabethan government. Yet the
playwright produced a text which was at once generically complex
(the play blurs the distinction between chronicle history and
'domestic' tragedy), brilliantly assured in its dramatic
craftsmanship, and politically explosive. The play depicts the
streets and houses in which its original spectators lived and
worked with a precision unprecedented in English writing. But this
vividly realised London is under assault, first from rebels outside
its walls, and subsequently (and more seriously) from the
predations of two monarchs. The text of this edition has already
been used by the actors at Shakespeare's Globe when they gave the
first London performance of Edward IV for more than four centuries.
By demonstrating the playwright's dextrous marshalling of a
remarkable range of sources, and by examining afresh the
dramatist's singular theatrical technique, this volume opens up an
exciting if difficult play to a new generation of scholars and
performers.
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