A fresh approach to Thomas Middleton's career that focuses attention on his relations with Dekker, Shakespeare, and Rowley.

This book sets out to solve by statistics the problems of disputed authorship that surround the work of Jacobean dramatist Thomas Middleton. Among other things, Dr Lake shows that there is 99 per cent statistical confidence for the conclusion that The Puritan and The Revenger's Tragedy were written by Middleton rather than by anyone else alive in the early seventeenth century.

Appendices contain the text of the plays "A Yorkshire tragedy" and "The puritain"

Can the inadvertent clashes between collaborators produce more powerful effects than their concordances? For Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, the playwriting team best known for their tragedy The Changeling, disagreements and friction proved quite beneficial for their work. This first full-length study of Middleton and Rowley uses their plays to propose a new model for the study of collaborative authorship in early modern English drama. David Nicol highlights the diverse forms of collaborative relationships that factor into a play's meaning, including playwrights, actors, companies, playhouses, and patrons. This kaleidoscopic approach, which views the plays from all these perspectives, throws new light on the Middleton-Rowley oeuvre and on early modern dramatic collaboration as a whole.

Thomas Middleton and the Plural Politics of Jacobean Drama represents the first sustained study of Middleton’s dramatic works as responses to James I’s governance. Through examining Middleton’s poiesis in relation to the political theology of Jacobean London, Kaethler explores early forms of free speech, namely parrhēsia, and rhetorical devices, such as irony and allegory, to elucidate the ways in which Middleton’s plural art exposes the limitations of the monarch’s sovereign image. By drawing upon earlier forms of dramatic intervention, James’s writings, and popular literature that blossomed during the Jacobean period, including news pamphlets, the book surveys a selection of Middleton’s writings, ranging from his first extant play The Phoenix (1604) to his scandalous finale A Game at Chess (1624). In the course of this investigation, the author identifies that although Middleton’s drama spurs political awareness and questions authority, it nevertheless simultaneously promotes alternative structures of power, which manifest as misogyny and white supremacy.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Pageantry and power is the first full and in-depth cultural history of the Lord Mayor’s Show in the early modern period. It provides new insight into the culture and history of the London of Shakespeare’s time and beyond. Central to the cultural life of London, the Lord Mayor’s Shows were high-profile and lavish entertainments produced by some of the most talented writers of the time. Employing an interdisciplinary approach, Pageantry and power explores various important factors, including the relationship between the printed texts of the Shows and actual events. This full-scale study of the civic works of important writers enhances our understanding of their other, often better-known, dramatic works contributing to a fuller estimation of their literary careers. This book is an invaluable resource for scholars and students of early modern literature, drama, history, civic culture, pageantry, urban studies, cultural geography, book history, as well as the interested general reader. Pageantry and power won the 2011 David Bevington Award for the Best New Book in Early Drama Studies.

Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture is a comprehensive companion to The Collected Works of Thomas Middleton, providing detailed introductions to and full editorial apparatus for the works themselves as well as a wealth of information about Middleton's historical and literary context.

The second edition of the book, with its emending and updated text, provides a glimpse into the English life and culture, starting from the middle ages to the twenty-first century. As the English life and culture are inextricably interwoven with the literary traditions of England and its myriad aspects, this study provides significant insights into the field of English literature and the contexts it emerges from. The text begins with a description of English life and culture from the Medieval period to the Renaissance. The author gives a masterly analysis of such subjects as Feudalism, Medieval Drama and literature, the Renaissance, the Reformation and most significantly, the Elizabethan Theatre. A new sub-section on 'Women Writers of the Renaissance' has been added to this chapter. Then, the text goes on to describe in detail about the Restoration Period and the Age of Reason. Besides, the book gives a wealth of information on important topics like Romanticism, the Industrial Revolution, Victorianism and Victorian literature. The text concludes with a chapter that deals on Modernism, Literature and Culture in the Postmodern World, and Aspects of Contemporary Culture and Society. In the last chapter, two sub-sections have been introduced on 'British Fiction in the Twenty-First Century' and 'Brexit'. What distinguishes the text is the provision of a Glossary at the end of each chapter, which gives not only the meaning and definition of the terms but also provides the entire cultural background and the history that these terms are associated with. Students of English literature—both undergraduate honours and postgraduate students—will find this book highly informative, enlightening, and refreshing in its style. In addition, all those who have an abiding interest in English life and culture will find reading this text a stimulating and rewarding experience TARGET AUDIENCE • BA (Hons.) English • MA English Literature/English

In Worldly Shakespeare Richard Wilson proposes that the universalism proclaimed in the name of Shakespeare's playhouse was tempered by his own worldliness, the performative idea that runs through his plays, that if 'All the world's a stage', then 'all the men and women in it' are 'merely players'. Situating this playacting in the context of current concerns about the difference between globalization and mondialisation, the book considers how this drama offers itself as a model for a planet governed not according to universal toleration, but the right to offend: 'But with good will'. For when he asks us to think we 'have but slumbered' throughout his offensive plays, Wilson suggests, Shakespeare is presenting a drama without catharsis, which anticipates post-structuralist thinkers like Jacques Rancire and Slavoj A iA ek, who insist the essence of democracy is dissent, and 'the presence of two worlds in one'. Living out his scenario of the guest who destroys the host, by welcoming the religious terrorist, paranoid queen, veiled woman, papist diehard, or puritan fundamentalist into his play-world, Worldly Shakespeare concludes, the dramatist instead provides a pretext for our globalized communities in a time of Facebook and fatwa, as we also come to depend on the right to offend 'with our good will'.

**NAMED ONE OF THE BEST ART BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY ARTNEWS** The first and definitive biography of the celebrated collectors Dominique and John de Menil, who became one of the greatest cultural forces of the twentieth century through groundbreaking exhibits of art, artistic scholarship, the creation of innovative galleries and museums, and work with civil rights. Dominique and John de Menil created an oasis of culture in their Philip Johnson-designed house with everyone from Marlene Dietrich and René Magritte to Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns. In Houston, they built the Menil Collection, the Rothko Chapel, the Byzantine Fresco Chapel, the Cy Twombly Gallery, and underwrote the Contemporary Arts Museum. Now, with unprecedented access to family archives, William Middleton has written a sweeping biography of this unique couple. From their ancestors in Normandy and Alsace, to their own early years in France, and their travels in South America before settling in Houston. We see them introduced to the artists in Europe and America whose works they would collect, and we see how, by the 1960s, their collection had grown to include 17,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, rare books, and decorative objects. And here is, as well, a vivid behind-the-scenes look at the art world of the twentieth century and the enormous influence the de Menils wielded through what they collected and built and through the causes they believed in.