Discusses the development of the English theater during the Elizabethan era, including the origins of Elizabethan theater and dramas, the influence of the queen and the church, and the impact of various playwrights and actors.

Examines a variety of plays between 1550-1600 to demonstrate how they asserted ideas and ideals of 'Englishness' for audiences.

Examines the role of Elizabethan drama in the shape of cultural belief, values, and understanding of political authority.

Elizabethan Theater is a collection of essays offered in celebration of the long career of Samuel Schoenbaum. Throughout his career as biographer, bibliographer, historian, critic, and editor of scholarly journals, he has greatly enriched our appreciation of Shakespeare and his fellows. These essays celebrate the many ways in which he has enhanced our understanding through his skill in balancing historical contexts with a recognition and respect for the importance of individual authorship. Distinguished scholars from many countries, representing many points of view, have chosen to honor Schoenbaum by contributing essays that explore the four overlapping areas with which his own research has mainly been concerned: biographical scholarship, the concept of authorship, the hand of the author perceived within the play, and the multiple historical contexts that helped to determine how Elizabethan plays were written and received.

(Applause Books). Boisterous and unrestrained like the age itself, the Elizabethan theatre has long defended its place at the apex of English dramatic history. Shakespeare was but the brightest star in this extraordinary galaxy of playwrights. The stage boasted a rich and varied repertoire from courtly and romantic comedy to domestic and high tragedy, melodrama, farce, and histories. The Gassner-Green anthology revives the whole range of this universal stage, offering us the unbounded theatrical inventiveness of the age. Elizabethan Drama is designed to provide the modern reader with complete access to the plays, as well as the beguiling Elizabethan world which was their backdrop. John Gassner's classic introduction is supplemented by his and William Green's superb prefaces to the individual plays. Marginal glosses and footnotes throughout keep the immediacy of the Elizabethan stage within easy reach.

Shakespeare’s Theatre: A History examines the theatre spaces used by William Shakespeare, and explores these spaces in relation to the social and political framework of the Elizabethan era. The text journeys from the performing spaces of the provincial inns, guild halls and houses of the gentry of the Bard’s early career, to the purpose-built outdoor playhouses of London, including the Globe, the Theatre, and the Curtain, and the royal courts of Elizabeth and James I. The author also discusses the players for whom Shakespeare wrote, and the positioning—or dispositioning—of audience members in relation to the stage. Widely and deeply researched, this fascinating volume is the first to draw on the most recent archaeological work on the remains of the Rose and the Globe, as well as continuing publications from the Records of Early English Drama project. The book also explores the contentious view that the ‘plot’ of The Seven Deadly Sins (part II), provides unprecedented insight into the working practices of Shakespeare’s company and includes a complete and modernized version of the ‘plot’. Throughout, the author relates the practicalities of early modern playing to the evolving systems of aristocratic patronage and royal licensing within which they developed Insightful and engaging, Shakespeare’s Theatre is ideal reading for undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars of literature and theatre studies.

The scripts of the Admiral's Men (later Prince Henry's Men), the Chamberlain's Men (later the King's Men) boy actors and Worcester's/Queen Anne's Men are examined in detail to document the differing costume practices of these companies, especially the ways in which in their earlier days they reconciled visual splendor with the greatest possible economy.

This major study reconstructs the vast history of European drama from Greek tragedy through to twentieth-century theatre, focusing on the subject of identity. Throughout history, drama has performed and represented political, religious, national, ethnic, class-related, gendered, and individual concepts of identity. Erika Fischer-Lichte's topics include: * ancient Greek theatre * Shakespeare and Elizabethan theatre by Corneilli, Racine, Molière * the Italian commedia dell'arte and its transformations into eighteenth-century drama * the German Enlightenment - Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, and Lenz * romanticism by Kleist, Byron, Shelley, Hugo, de Vigny, Musset, Büchner, and Nestroy * the turn of the century - Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Stanislavski * the twentieth century - Craig, Meyerhold, Artaud, O'Neill, Pirandello, Brecht, Beckett, Müller. Anyone interested in theatre throughout history and today will find this an invaluable source of information.