This collection is intended to make accessible a number of important non-Shakespearean Renaissance plays. Priority has been given to those plays not currently available in affordable editions. To this end, widely republished plays by playwrights such as Marlowe and Jonson (such as Dr Faustus, Volpone and The Alchemist) have been excluded in favour of their less readily available work (Edward II, The Masque of Blackness and Epicoene) and in favour of the work of dramatists such as Heywood, Middleton and Beaumont.
Our hope is that this anthology will stimulate readers’ interest in this period of intense cultural and social change. To facilitate further reading and research in the drama of this period and in the critical debates that this drama has generated, a broad range of contextualising materials has been included.
The following plan outlines the nature and scope of these materials, and offers an indication of the composition of the anthology as a whole.
| Introductory material | |
| Introduction | The introduction situates the plays and theatres of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in their social and cultural context, discussing |
| • pre-Renaissance theatre | |
| • the different kinds of playhouses | |
| • the plays that were performed in them | |
| • contemporary social, economic and political institutions, and the plays' engagement with these. | |
| Further reading | Comprehensive bibliography of titles relating to topics and issues raised in the introduction. |
| Chronology | Timeline setting the plays in chronological relation to other significant historical and cultural events. |
| The plays | |
| Headnotes | Each play is prefaced with its own introductory headnote, discussing the thematic focus of the play and its textual history. |
| Further reading | Each headnote is followed by a list of other editions of the play and selected criticism relating to it. |
| Works of related interest | Each play included in this anthology is cross-referenced to other plays of the period that relate generically and/or thematically. |
| The plays | The text of each play has been fully edited and footnoted, and the spelling has been modernised. |
| Website | |
| For a selection of related Renaissance material that complements and extends this collection, visit The Routledge Anthology of Renaissance Drama website at www.routledge.com/textbooks/0415187346 | |