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.
Portraits in Early Modern English Drama: Visual Culture, Play-Texts, and Performances
1st Edition
By Emanuel Stelzer
December 18, 2020
Portraits in Early Modern English Drama studies the complex web of interconnections that grows out of the presentation of portraits as props in early modern English drama. Emanuel Stelzer considers this theory from the Elizabethan age up to the closing of the theatres. This book examines how the ...
Representations of Flemish Immigrants on the Early Modern Stage
1st Edition
By Peter Matthew McCluskey
December 18, 2020
Immigrants from the Low Countries constituted the largest population of resident aliens in early modern England. Possessing superior technology in a number of fields and enjoying governmental protection, the Flemish were charged by many native artisans with unfair economic competition. With ...
Restoration Staging, 1660-74
1st Edition
By Tim Keenan
December 18, 2020
Restoration Staging 1660–74 cuts through prevalent ideas of Restoration theatre and drama to read early plays in their original theatrical contexts.Tim Keenan argues that Restoration play texts contain far more information about their own performance than previously imagined. Focusing on specific ...
The Children's Troupes and the Transformation of English Theater 1509-1608: Pedagogue, Playwrights, Playbooks, and Play-boys
1st Edition
By Jeanne McCarthy
December 18, 2020
The Children’s Troupes and the Transformation of English Theater 1509–1608 uncovers the role of the children’s companies in transforming perceptions of authorship and publishing, performance, playing spaces, patronage, actor training, and gender politics in the sixteenth century.Jeanne McCarthy ...
Christopher Marlowe and the Failure to Unify
1st Edition
By Andrew Duxfield
December 12, 2019
In this sustained full length study of Marlowe's plays, Andrew Duxfield argues that Marlovian drama exhibits a marked interest in unity and unification, and that in doing so it engages with a discourse of anxiety over social discord that was prominent in the 1580s and 1590s. In combination with the...
Digital Humanities and the Lost Drama of Early Modern England: Ten Case Studies
1st Edition
By Matthew Steggle
December 12, 2019
This book establishes new information about the likely content of ten lost plays from the period 1580-1642. These plays’ authors include Nashe, Heywood, and Dekker; and the plays themselves connect in direct ways to some of the most canonical dramas of English literature, including Hamlet, King ...
Tragedy and Trauma in the Plays of Christopher Marlowe
1st Edition
By Mathew R. Martin
December 12, 2019
Contending that criticism of Marlowe’s plays has been limited by humanist conceptions of tragedy, this book engages with trauma theory, especially psychoanalytic trauma theory, to offer a fresh critical perspective within which to make sense of the tension in Marlowe’s plays between the tragic and ...
Desires of Credit in Early Modern Theory and Drama: Commerce, Poesy, and the Profitable Imagination
1st Edition
By Brian Sheerin
January 17, 2019
Desires of Credit in Early Modern Theory and Drama traces the near-simultaneous rise of economic theory, literary criticism, and public theater in London at the turn of the seventeenth century, and posits that connecting all three is a fascination with creating something out of nothing simply by ...
The Chester Cycle in Context, 1555–1575: Religion, Drama, and the Impact of Change
1st Edition
By Jessica Dell, Helen Ostovich, David Klausner
May 24, 2017
The Chester Cycle in Context, 1555-1575 considers the implications of recent archival research which has profoundly changed our view of the continuation of performances of Chester's civic biblical play cycle into the reign of Elizabeth I. Scholars now view the decline and ultimate abandonment of ...
Early Modern Academic Drama
1st Edition
By Paul D. Streufert, Jonathan Walker
November 28, 2016
In this essay collection, the contributors contend that academic drama represents an important, but heretofore understudied, site of cultural production in early modern England. Focusing on plays that were written and performed in academic environments such as Oxford University, Cambridge ...
Performing Maternity in Early Modern England
1st Edition
By Kathryn R. McPherson, Kathryn M. Moncrief
November 28, 2016
Performing Maternity in Early Modern England features essays that share a common concern with exploring maternity's cultural representation, performative aspects and practical consequences in the period from 1540-1690. The essays interrogate how early modern texts depict fertility, conception, ...
The Disguised Ruler in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries
1st Edition
By Kevin A. Quarmby
November 16, 2016
In the early seventeenth century, the London stage often portrayed a ruler covertly spying on his subjects. Traditionally deemed 'Jacobean disguised ruler plays', these works include Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, Marston's The Malcontent and The Fawn, Middleton's The Phoenix, and Sharpham's ...