A New Companion to Renaissance Drama

A New Companion to Renaissance Drama provides an invaluable summary of past and present scholarship surrounding the most popular and influential literary form of its time. Original interpretations from leading scholars set the scene for important paths of future inquiry.

• A colorful, comprehensive and interdisciplinary overview of the material conditions of Renaissance plays, England's most important dramatic period
• Contributors are both established and emerging scholars, with many leading international figures in the discipline
• Offers a unique approach by organizing the chapters by cultural context, theatre history, genre studies, theoretical applications, and material studies
• Chapters address newest departures and future directions for Renaissance drama scholarship
• Arthur Kinney is a world-renowned figure in the field

List of Illustrations x

Notes on Contributors xi

Acknowledgments xviii

Introduction 1
Arthur F. Kinney and Thomas Warren Hopper

Part I Context 9

1 The Politics of Renaissance England 11
Norman Jones

2 Continental Influences 21
Lawrence F. Rhu

3 Medieval and Reformation Roots 35
Raphael Falco

4 Popular Culture and the Early Modern Stage 51
Sophie Chiari and François Laroque

5 Multiculturalism and Early Modern Drama 65
Scott Oldenburg

6 London and Westminster 75
Ian W. Archer

7 Travel and Trade 88
William H. Sherman

8 The Theater and the Early Modern Culture of Debt 98
Amanda Bailey

9 Vagrancy 112
William C. Carroll

10 Domestic Life 125
Martin Ingram

11 Religious Persuasions, c.1580–c.1620 143
Lori Anne Ferrell

12 Science, Natural Philosophy, and New Philosophy in Early Modern England 154
Barbara H. Traister

13 Magic and Witchcraft 170
Deborah Willis

14 Antitheatricality: The Theater as Scourge 182
Leah S. Marcus

Part II Theater History 193

15 Performance: Audiences, Actors, Stage Business 195
S. P. Cerasano

16 Playhouses 211
David Kathman

17 Theatrical License and Censorship 225
Richard Dutton

18 Playing Companies and Repertory 239
Roslyn L. Knutson

19 Rehearsal and Acting Practice 250
Don Weingust

20 Boy Companies and Private Theaters 268
Michael Shapiro

21 Women’s Involvement in Theatrical Production 282
Natasha Korda

22 “To travayle amongst our frendes”: Touring 296
Peter H. Greenfield

23 Progresses and Court Entertainments 309
R. Malcolm Smuts

24 “What revels are in hand?” Performances in the Great Households 322
Suzanne Westfall

25 Civic Drama 337
Lawrence Manley

Part III Genres 355

26 Masque 357
David Lindley

27 The History Play: Shakespeare and Beyond 371
Brian Walsh

28 Domestic Tragedy: Private Life on the Public Stage 388
Lena Cowen Orlin

29 Revenge Tragedy 403
Marissa Greenberg

30 Romance and Tragicomedy 417
Jane Hwang Degenhardt and Cyrus Mulready

Part IV Critical Approaches 441

31 Sexuality and Queerness on the Early Modern Stage 443
Valerie Billing

32 Gendering the Stage 456
Alison Findlay

33 Race and Early Modern Drama 474
Mary Floyd‐Wilson

34 Staging Disability in Renaissance Drama 487
David Houston Wood

35 Space and Place 501
Adam Zucker

36 The Matter of Wit and the Early Modern Stage 513
Ian Munro

37 Materialisms 529
Elizabeth Williamson

Part V Playwrights, Publishers, and Textual Studies 543

38 The Transmission of an English Renaissance Play‐Text 545
Grace Ioppolo

39 Publishers of Drama 560
Tara L. Lyons

40 Sidney, Cary, Cavendish: Playwrights of the Printed Page and a Future Stage 576
Lara Dodds and Margaret Ferguson

41 Nonprofessional Playwrights 598
Matteo Pangallo

Index 612

Arthur F. Kinney is Thomas W. Copeland Professor of Literary History Emeritus in the University of Massachusetts and Founding Director of the Massachusetts Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies. He is the author and editor of a number of books and essays, including Renaissance Drama (editor, 2005), Shakespeare and Cognition (2006), Elizabethan and Jacobean England (2010), The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare (editor, 2012), and Renaissance Reflections, Selected Essays 1976-2014 (2014). He is the only recipient of both the Paul Oskar Kristeller Lifetime Achievement Award from the Renaissance Society of America and the Jean Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sidney Society.

Thomas Warren Hopper is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst whose research focuses on classical reception. He has previously worked as the Walter T. Chmielewski Fellow for English Literary Renaissance, contributed to the editing of The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare (2012). He teaches at Eagle Hill School in Hardwick, MA.

"A New Companion to Renaissance Drama offers a freshly innovative way of studying the great drama of England in the age of Shakespeare. With an impressive array of scholars and critics, this is an eloquent tribute and indispensable literary companion to the vitality of this fascinating field of study."

David Bevington, University of Chicago

A New Companion to Renaissance Drama provides an invaluable and wide-ranging exploration of the plays, the playwrights, the theater, and the culture of Early Modern England. This expansive guide to Renaissance plays and the world they played to is comprised of an outstanding collection of essays, many written by internationally known authorities across both prominent and emerging scholarly fields. Together they cover matters of theatrical representation within its material, historical, and cultural contexts, offering an inter-disciplinary approach to Renaissance drama, the most popular literary form of its time. Alongside close readings of selected passages from Shakespeare and his contemporaries, the authors offer original interpretations which will open up important paths of inquiry for conversations in the years ahead.

The New Companion offers a significantly increased coverage of the field, drawing on the latest research and current scholarship. The editors have organized the chapters by cultural context throughout, covering genre studies, theoretical applications, and material studies.

This volume will be a key text not only for scholars and graduate students of Renaissance drama and individual playwrights, and undergraduates studying theatre and English, especially Shakespeare, but also for general readers interested in drama.