The Oxford Handbook of the Age of Shakespeare presents a broad sampling of current historical scholarship on the period of Shakespeare's career that will assist and stimulate scholars of his poems and plays. Rather than merely attempting to summarize the historical 'background' to Shakespeare, individual chapters seek to exemplify a wide variety of perspectives and methodologies currently used in historical research on the early modern period that can inform close analysis of literature. Different sections examine political history at both the national and local levels; relationships between intellectual culture and the early modern political imagination; relevant aspects of religious and social history; and facets of the histories of architecture, the visual arts and music. Topics treated include the emergence of an early modern 'public sphere' and its relationship to drama during Shakespeare's lifetime; the role of historical narratives in shaping the period's views on the workings of politics; attitudes about the role of emotion in social life; cultures of honour and shame and the rituals and literary forms through which they found expression; crime and murder; and visual expressions of ideas of moral disorder and natural monstrosity, in printed images as well as garden architecture.

Essays on English Renaissance culture make a major contribution to the debate on historical method. For nearly two decades, Renaissance literary scholarship has been dominated by various forms of postmodern criticism which claim to expose the simplistic methodology of `traditional' criticism and to offer a more sophisticated view of the relation between literature and history; however, this new approach, although making scholars more alert to the political significance of literary texts, has been widely criticised on both methodological and theoretical grounds. The revisionist essays collected in this volume make a major contribution to the modern debate on historical method, approaching Renaissance culture from different gender perspectives and a variety of political standpoints, but all sharing an interest in the interdisciplinary study of the past.ROBIN HEADLAM WELLS is Professor of English, University of Surrey Roehampton; GLENN BURGESS is Professor of History, University of Hull; ROWLAND WYMER is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Hull. Contributors: GLENN BURGESS, STANLEY STEWART, BLAIR WORDEN, ANDREW GURR, KATHARINE EISAMAN MAUS, ROWLAND WYMER, GRAHAM PARRY, MALCOLM SMUTS, STEVEN ZWICKER, HEATHER DUBROW,ROBIN HEADLAM WELLS.

In the period between 1575 and 1625, civic peace in England, Scotland, and Ireland was persistently threatened by various kinds of religiously inspired violence, involving conspiracies, rebellions, and foreign invasions. Religious divisions divided local communities in all three kingdoms, but they also impacted relations between the nations, and in the broader European continent. The challenges posed by actual or potential religious violence gave rise to complex responses, including efforts to impose religious uniformity through preaching campaigns and regulation of national churches; an expanded use of the press as a medium of religious and political propaganda; improved government surveillance; the selective incarceration of English, Scottish, and Irish Catholics; and a variety of diplomatic and military initiatives, undertaken not only by royal governments but also by private individuals. The result was the development of more robust and resilient, although still vulnerable, states in all three kingdoms and, after the dynastic union of Britain in 1603, an effort to create a single state incorporating all of them. R. Malcolm Smuts traces the story of how this happened by moving beyond frameworks of national and institutional history, to understand the ebb and flow of events and processes of religious and political change across frontiers. The study pays close attention to interactions between the political, cultural, intellectual, ecclesiastical, military, and diplomatic dimensions of its subject. A final chapter explores how and why provisional solutions to the problem of violent, religiously inflected conflict collapsed in the reign of Charles I.

The Oxford Handbook of the Age of Shakespeare presents a broad sampling of current historical scholarship on the period of Shakespeare's career that will assist and stimulate scholars of his poems and plays. Rather than merely attempting to summarize the historical 'background' to Shakespeare, individual chapters seek to exemplify a wide variety of perspectives and methodologies currently used in historical research on the early modern period that can inform close analysis of literature. Different sections examine political history at both the national and local levels; relationships between intellectual culture and the early modern political imagination; relevant aspects of religious and social history; and facets of the histories of architecture, the visual arts, and music. Topics treated include the emergence of an early modern 'public sphere' and its relationship to drama during Shakespeare's lifetime; the role of historical narratives in shaping the period's views on the workings of politics; attitudes about the role of emotion in social life; cultures of honour and shame and the rituals and literary forms through which they found expression; crime and murder; and visual expressions of ideas of moral disorder and natural monstrosity, in printed images as well as garden architecture.

Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England R. Malcolm Smuts "The sharpest feature of this book is that it takes poetry, pictures, and architecture seriously by seeing these as major items of historical testimony. . . . An engaging and sensitive study."--"American Historical Review" "Smuts's great strength is his grasp of the politics of the age. . . . At every point he is able to buttress his arguments about Charles I's 'cultural policy' by reference to Charles's social, economic, and foreign policy."--"Journal of Modern History" "The book's virtues are numerous. Smuts, a historian, has read widely, pulling together much valuable information while offering intelligent insights of his own. . . . Particularly valuable is the book's emphasis on the social and factional complexity of the court and thus of the art it produced and consumed."--"Sixteenth Century Journal" "Smuts's book deserves a wide readership. Provocative in the best sense of the word, it challenges the reader at every turn and offers a running commentary on possibilities for future research."--"Journal of British Studies" In this work R. Malcolm Smuts examines the fundamental cultural changes that occurred within the English royal court between the last decade of the sixteenth century and the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642. R. Malcolm Smuts is Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He is editor of "The Stuart Court and Europe: Essays in Politics and Political Culture" and author of "Culture and Power in England, ca. 1585-1685." 1987 336 pages 6 x 9 30 illus. ISBN 978-0-8122-1696-7 Paper $24.95s 16.50 World Rights History, Cultural Studies, Fine Arts

This interdisciplinary 1996 collection examines the multiple ties that connected the Stuart court to Europe, and the ways in which these shaped English politics and political culture. Together, the essays demonstrate that even the domestic history of the period can only be understood fully by taking into account the international horizons, concerns and affiliations of the British ruling elite. The opening essays by Jonathan Scott develop a provocative overview of the whole period. The remaining contributions examine topics such as the European roots of common law thought; the nature of national identity; the use of visual display in conveying the grandeur of kingship; the religion of Charles II; and the role of Charles's French mistress, the duchess of Portsmouth, in English and international politics. A concluding chapter by Geoffrey Parker suggests several new avenues for placing the British Isles within a European perspective.