Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama
About the Book Series
This series presents original research on theatre histories and performance histories; the time period covered is from about 1500 to the early 18th century. Studies in which women's activities are a central feature of discussion are especially of interest; this may include women as financial or technical support (patrons, musicians, dancers, seamstresses, wig-makers) or house support staff (e.g., gatherers), rather than performance per se. We also welcome critiques of early modern drama that take into account the production values of the plays and rely on period records of performance.
Emulation on the Shakespearean Stage
1st Edition
By Vernon Guy Dickson
August 26, 2016
The English Renaissance has long been considered a period with a particular focus on imitation; however, much related scholarship has misunderstood or simply marginalized the significance of emulative practices and theories in the period. This work uses the interactions of a range of English ...
Laughing and Weeping in Early Modern Theatres
1st Edition
By Matthew Steggle
August 26, 2016
Did Shakespeare's original audiences weep? Equally, while it seems obvious that they must have laughed at plays performed in early modern theatres, can we say anything about what their laughter sounded like, about when it occurred, and about how, culturally, it was interpreted? Related to both of ...
Martyrs and Players in Early Modern England: Tragedy, Religion and Violence on Stage
1st Edition
By David K. Anderson
August 26, 2016
Focusing on Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, John Webster and John Milton, Martyrs and Players in Early Modern England argues that the English tragedians reflected an unease within the culture to acts of religious violence. David Anderson explores a link between the unstable emotional ...
Women, Medicine and Theatre 1500–1750: Literary Mountebanks and Performing Quacks
1st Edition
By M.A. Katritzky
August 26, 2016
Well illustrated, accessibly presented, and drawing on a comprehensive range of historical documents, including British, German and other European images, and literary as well as non-literary texts (many previously unconsidered in this context), this study offers the first interdisciplinary ...
Marston, Rivalry, Rapprochement, and Jonson
1st Edition
By Charles Cathcart
April 28, 2008
Significant and unexplored signs of John Marston's literary rivalry with Ben Jonson are investigated here by Charles Cathcart. The centrepiece of the book is its argument that the anonymous play The Family of Love, sometimes attributed to Thomas Middleton and sometimes to Lording Barry, was in part...
Revenge Tragedy and the Drama of Commemoration in Reforming England
1st Edition
By Thomas Rist
March 28, 2008
Considering major works by Kyd, Shakespeare, Middleton and Webster among others, this book transforms current understanding of early modern revenge tragedy. Examing the genre in light of historical revisions to England's Reformations, and with appropriate regard to the social history of the dead, ...
The Cultural Uses of the Caesars on the English Renaissance Stage
1st Edition
By Lisa Hopkins
March 28, 2008
Caesarian power was a crucial context in the Renaissance, as rulers in Europe, Russia and Turkey all sought to appropriate Caesarian imagery and authority, but it has been surprisingly little explored in scholarship. In this study Lisa Hopkins explores the way in which the stories of the Caesars, ...
Women Players in England, 1500–1660: Beyond the All-Male Stage
1st Edition
Edited
By Pamela Allen Brown, Peter Parolin
March 12, 2008
Offering evidence of women's extensive contributions to the theatrical landscape, this volume sharply challenges the assumption that the stage was 'all male' in early modern England. The editors and contributors argue that the pervasiveness of female performance affected cultural production, even ...
Cymbeline: Constructions of Britain
1st Edition
By Ros King
February 28, 2005
In Cymbeline: Constructions of Britain, Ros King argues that because of previous misunderstanding of the nature and history of tragi-comedy, critics have mistaken the tone of Shakespeare's play. Although it is often dismissed as a pedestrian 'romance', or at best a self-parodic reworking of ...
Staging Gender in Behn and Centlivre: Women's Comedy and the Theatre
1st Edition
By Nancy Copeland
March 28, 2004
Staging Gender in Behn and Centlivre studies the representation of gender in four of the most important plays by the leading professional women playwrights of the late Stuart period. Behn's The Rover (1677) and The Luckey Chance (1686) and Centlivre's The Busie Body (1709) and The Wonder: A Woman ...