This expansive, inter-disciplinary guide to Renaissance plays and the world they played to gives readers a colorful overview of England's great dramatic age.

• Provides an expansive and inter-disciplinary approach to Renaissance plays and the world they played to.
• Offers a colourful and comprehensive overview of the material conditions of England's most important dramatic period.
• Gives readers facts and data along with up-to-date interpretation of the plays.
• Looks at the drama in terms of its cultural agency, its collaborative nature, and its ideological complexity.

"This collection contains a wealth of information about the vast and rich domain of Renaissance drama. Always lively, the essays display state-of-the-art scholarship on the plays, the playwrights, the theater, and the culture of Early Modern England. It will be an indispensible scholarly resource for those interested in the entirety of the Renaissance theatrical world, an arena which, as this volume definitively confirms, encompassed a rich array of playmakers and theatrical forms." Jean Howard, Columbia University

"Serious first-time readers of Renaissance drama, as well as veteran teachers looking for a credible source of current information, will likely find this substantial volume of great utility." Choice

Arthur F. Kinney is Copeland Professor of Literary History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Director of the Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies. He is the editor of A Companion to Renaissance Drama (Blackwell, 2002) and of the journal English Literary Renaissance. His other recent publications include Lies like Truth: Shakespeare, Macbeth, and the Cultural Moment (2001) and Shakespeare by Stages (Blackwell, 2002).