A fair copy, with corrections and additions, in Arthur Wilson's autograph. Prompter's markings and cuts.

None of these assumptions has been tested against the evidence of the surviving plays from the period - an oversight that the present study seeks to remedy.

Twenty-six original essays by leading theorists and historians of the pre-seventeenth-century English stage chart a paradigmatic shift within the field. In contrast to the traditional emphasis on individual authors, the contributors to this storehouse of new historical information and critical insight explore the place of the stage within the larger society, as well as issues of performance and physical space, providing an innovative approach to both literary studies and cultural history.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1871.