Breaking new ground in the study of tragedy, early modern theatre, and literary London, Metropolitan Tragedy demonstrates that early modern tragedy emerged from the juncture of radical changes in London's urban fabric and the city's judicial procedures. Marissa Greenberg argues that plays by Shakespeare, Milton, Massinger, and others rework classical conventions to represent the city as a locus of suffering and loss while they reflect on actual sources of injustice in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century London: structural upheaval, imperial ambition, and political tyranny. Drawing on a rich archive of printed and manuscript sources, including numerous images of England's capital, Greenberg reveals the competing ideas about the metropolis that mediated responses to theatrical tragedy. The first study of early modern tragedy as an urban genre, Metropolitan Tragedy advances our understanding of the intersections between genre and history.

On college and university campuses across the United States, scholar-teachers and their students find themselves in conditions of both real threat and tremendous possibility. Building on the recent surge of interest in equitable pedagogy within the field of Shakespeare and Renaissance literary studies, Situating Shakespeare Pedagogy in U.S. Higher Education makes a case for anchoring our teaching in these institutional power dynamics that have historically contributed to systemic injustice and continue to affect our work on a daily basis. Each of the contributors to this collection speaks directly to the intersection between their own identities, the lived experiences of their students, and the particular qualities of the institutions where they teach--including student demographics, curricular requirements, geographical location, and comparative levels of administrative support for implementing social justice approaches. From this perspective, they provide hope and practical guidance for scholar-educators who want to meet our students where they are.