Elizabethan Popular Theatre surveys the Golden Age of English popular theatre: the 1590s, the age of Marlowe and the young Shakespeare. The book describes the staging practices, performance conditions and acting techniques of the period, focusing on five popular dramas: The Spanish Tragedy, Mucedorus, Edward II, Doctor Faustus and Titus Andronicus, as well as providing a comprehensive history of a variety of contemporary playhouse stages, performances, and players.

Elizabethan Popular Theatre surveys the Golden Age of English popular theatre: the 1590s, the age of Marlowe and the young Shakespeare. The book describes the staging practices, performance conditions and acting techniques of the period, focusing on five popular dramas: The Spanish Tragedy, Mucedorus, Edward II, Doctor Faustus and Titus Andronicus, as well as providing a comprehensive history of a variety of contemporary playhouse stages, performances, and players.

The New Inn is one of the most neglected of Jonson's plays which is now finding a new and appreciative audience. May be read, according to this Editor's introduction, as a tribute to Shakespeare, and as a belated recognition that the fantasies of romance contain profound truths. The spelling has been modernised and the text updated and corrected for this paperback edition. There is also a critical introduction, helpful appendices and a commentary which explains difficult or significant passages within the play. -- .

Michael Hattaway's Introduction to this bestselling edition of As You Like It accounts for what makes this popular play both innocent and dangerous. This third edition includes a new section on recent critical interpretations, including sections on ecocriticism, peace studies, and myths of gender, on recent as well as past stage productions and films of the play, as well as fresh illustrations. An appendix on an early court performance in 1599, commentary on the play's language, the book trade, and the discursive cultures of its time, as well as an updated reading list are also included.

Michael Hattaway's Introduction to this bestselling edition of As You Like It accounts for what makes this popular play both innocent and dangerous. This third edition includes a new section on recent critical interpretations, including sections on ecocriticism, peace studies, and myths of gender, on recent as well as past stage productions and films of the play, as well as fresh illustrations. An appendix on an early court performance in 1599, commentary on the play's language, the book trade, and the discursive cultures of its time, as well as an updated reading list are also included.

A series of outstanding productions by the Royal Shakespeare Company and others have recently demonstrated the theatrical vitality of Shakespeare's plays about the reign of Henry VI. In the Third Part Shakespeare extends his essay on monarchical politics by contrasting two kings, the good but ineffective Henry VI with his rival, the sensual and victorious Edward IV. He also offers more evidence of the perils of aristocratic factionalism in a series of scenes that display the grievous wounds caused by the Wars of the Roses. Here we watch the savage death of the Duke of York at the hands of Queen Margaret, the moving lament of King Henry as he witnesses the slaughter of the battle of Towton where the Lancastrians were defeated, and finally, Henry's death at the hands of Richard of Gloucester, later King Richard III.

Shakespeare's plays about the reign of Henry VI were for a long time undervalued, but a recent series of outstanding productions by the Royal Shakespeare Company and others has demonstrated their theatrical vitality. This is the first major edition in over twenty-five years. It takes account of recent discoveries concerning Shakespeare's early career and the problems of authorship, and pays particular attention to recent theatrical history. This textually authoritative edition reveals King Henry VI as a dramatically innovative and politically radical account of key events in the Hundred Years War.

Shakespeare is the national poet of many nations besides his own, though a peculiarly subversive one in both east and west. This volume contains a score of essays by scholars from Britain, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Poland, Romania, Spain, Ukraine and the USA, written to show how the momentous changes of 1989 were mirrored in the way Shakespeare has been interpreted and produced. The collection offers a valuable record of what Shakespeare has meant in the modern world and some pointers to what he may mean in the future.

This new edition of the Companion provides updated information about the principal theaters, playwrights and plays of the most important period of English drama, from 1580-1642. Revised essays are included in chapters on theaters, dramaturgy, political plays, heroic plays, burlesque, comedy, tragedy, and drama produced during the reign of Charles I. Their references have been updated and the substantial biographical and bibliographical section has been expanded. First Edition Hb (1990): 0-521-34657-6 First Edition Pb (1990): 0-521-38662-4

Shakespeare's history plays have been performed in recent years more than ever before throughout Britain, North America, and Europe. This volume is an accessible introduction to Shakespeare's historical and classical plays. Comprehensive in scope, it offers chapters on the individual plays and accounts of the genre of the history play, Renaissance theories of history, and masques and pageants. It compares them with other European history plays, and includes an account of women's roles, genealogical tables and a list of principal and recurrent characters.

A series of outstanding productions by the Royal Shakespeare Company and others have recently demonstrated the theatrical vitality of Shakespeare's plays about the reign of Henry VI. In the Third Part Shakespeare extends his essay on monarchical politics by contrasting two kings, the good but ineffective Henry VI with his rival, the sensual and victorious Edward IV. He also offers more evidence of the perils of aristocratic factionalism in a series of scenes that display the grievous wounds caused by the Wars of the Roses. Here we watch the savage death of the Duke of York at the hands of Queen Margaret, the moving lament of King Henry as he witnesses the slaughter of the battle of Towton where the Lancastrians were defeated, and finally, Henry's death at the hands of Richard of Gloucester, later King Richard III.

It takes account of recent discoveries concerning Shakespeare's early career, and pays particular attention to recent theatrical history, relating readings generated by modern performances to new ideologically positioned accounts of the history and politics of Shakespeare's age. Part II offers a searing account of aristocratic sedition and a portrait of a relationship between the King and his Protector, Good Duke Humphrey, which is as complex as that between Prince Hal and his father Bolingbrook. It concerns itself with the nature of history, the role of conscience, and the relation between law and equity. It also contains a complex reading of the kind of event that the Tudor regime had cause to fear, a popular uprising, led in this instance by Jack Cade.

This new edition of the Companion provides updated information about the principal theaters, playwrights and plays of the most important period of English drama, from 1580-1642. Revised essays are included in chapters on theaters, dramaturgy, political plays, heroic plays, burlesque, comedy, tragedy, and drama produced during the reign of Charles I. Their references have been updated and the substantial biographical and bibliographical section has been expanded. First Edition Hb (1990): 0-521-34657-6 First Edition Pb (1990): 0-521-38662-4

Shakespeare's history plays have been performed in recent years more than ever before throughout Britain, North America, and Europe. This volume is an accessible introduction to Shakespeare's historical and classical plays. Comprehensive in scope, it offers chapters on the individual plays and accounts of the genre of the history play, Renaissance theories of history, and masques and pageants. It compares them with other European history plays, and includes an account of women's roles, genealogical tables and a list of principal and recurrent characters.

It takes account of recent discoveries concerning Shakespeare's early career, and pays particular attention to recent theatrical history, relating readings generated by modern performances to new ideologically positioned accounts of the history and politics of Shakespeare's age. Part II offers a searing account of aristocratic sedition and a portrait of a relationship between the King and his Protector, Good Duke Humphrey, which is as complex as that between Prince Hal and his father Bolingbrook. It concerns itself with the nature of history, the role of conscience, and the relation between law and equity. It also contains a complex reading of the kind of event that the Tudor regime had cause to fear, a popular uprising, led in this instance by Jack Cade.

'Let him kill a lion with a pestle, husband; let him kill a lion with a pestle.'

So exclaims the Grocer's wife who, with her husband and servants, is attending one of the London's elite playhouses where a theatre comany has just begun to perform. Peeved at the fact that all the plays they see are satires on the lives and values of London's citizenry, the Grocer and his wife interrupt and demand a play that instead contains chivalric quests and courtly love. What's more, they nominate their apprentice Rafe to take on the hero's role of the knight in this entirely new play.

The author, Francis Beaumont, ends up not just satirising the grocers' naive taste for romance but parodying his own example of citizen comedy. This play-within-a-play becomes a pastiche of contemporary plays that scorned those who were not courtiers or at least gentlemen or ladies. Like Cervantes in Don Quixote, Beaumont exposes the folly of those that take representations for realities, but also celebrates their idealism and love of adventure.

The editor, Michael Hattaway, is editor of plays by Shakespeare and Jonson as well as of several volumes of critical essays, and author of "Elizabethan Popular Theatre, Hamlet: The Critics Debate, "and "Renaissance and Reformations: An Introduction to Early Modern English Literature." He is Professor Emeritus of English Literature in the University of Sheffield.