Companion guide to the third volume of Dekker's plays, with introductions and commentary on The Roaring Girl, If this be Not a Good Play, the Devil is in it, Troia-Nova Triumphans, Match me in London, The Virgin Martyr, The Witch of Edmonton and The Wonder of a Kingdom.

Companion guide to the third volume of Dekker's plays, with introductions and commentary on The Roaring Girl, If this be Not a Good Play, the Devil is in it, Troia-Nova Triumphans, Match me in London, The Virgin Martyr, The Witch of Edmonton and The Wonder of a Kingdom.

Thomas Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday is one of the most popular of Elizabethan plays--entertaining, racy and vivid in its characterization. Revealing a vital portrait of Elizabethan London and the interaction of social classes within the city, its social commentary is on the whole optimistic, though darker tones are discernible. The play has had a lively history of performance on both the professional and amateur stage.

"The play, based on a sensational witchcraft trial of 1621, presents Mother Sawyer and her local community in the grip of a witch-mania reflecting popular belief and superstition of the time ..."--Back cover.

When the young Swedish-descended Alexandra Bergson inherits her father's farm in Nebraska, she must transform the land from a wind-swept prairie landscape into a thriving enterprise. She dedicates herself completely to the land—at the cost of great sacrifices. O Pioneers! [1913] is Willa Cather's great masterpiece about American pioneers, where the land is as important a character as the people who cultivate it. WILLA CATHER [1873-1947] was an American author. After studying at the University of Nebraska, she worked as a teacher and journalist. Cather's novels often focus on settlers in the USA with a particular emphasis on female pioneers. In 1923, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the novel One of Ours, and in 1943, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Through twelve probing essays from leading scholars in the field, this book analyzes the consequences of the accession of James I in 1603 for English and British history, politics, literature and culture. Questioning the extent to which 1603 marked a radical break with the past, the book explores the Scottish and Welsh--as well as the wider European and colonial--contexts to this crucial date in history.

Events such as the Fire of London and the Plague, and historic locations like the Globe Theatre, are part of London's heritage. Yet until recently, the history of the city between 1500 and 1750 has been little studied. During this period, London's population soared from around 50,000 to nearly half a million--the demographic explosion transformed the city to a metropolis. London became a center of new social and sexual identities and a solvent of older, more hierarchical forms of social organization. The essays in this volume cover the themes of polis and the police, gender and sexuality, space and place, and material culture and consumption. Within these themes are thieves, prostitutes, litigious wives, the poor, disease, “great quantities of gooseberry pye,” and the taxing question of fresh water.