Household Servants in Early Modern Domestic Tragedy considerably advances existing scholarship on the institution of service in early modern culture and as represented on the early modern stage. With its focus on the homes of the middling sorts, to whom the protagonists of domestic tragedy belong, the book expands our understanding of employer-servant relationships beyond elite and aristocratic circles, the focus of previous studies. Drawing on early modern advice literature, household guides, domestic manuals, sermons, treatises, proverbs, mothers’ legacies, funeral sermons, diaries, letters, and jest books as well as making use of the recent findings by social and cultural historians of early modern England, the book examines the consequences of disordered domesticity for the master-servant relationship. This study nuances the picture of domestic servants constructed by both early modern moralists and modern scholarship, arguing against overarching, reductive narratives. The book argues that the experience of household service as depicted in domestic tragedy, like in real life, was complex and varied and that there was no typical experience of service.

In a theatre which self-consciously cultivated its audiences' imagination, how and what did playgoers 'see' on the stage? This book reconstructs one aspect of that imaginative process. It considers a range of printed and documentary evidence - the majority previously unpublished - for the way ordinary individuals thought about their houses and households. It then explores how writers of domestic tragedies engaged those attitudes to shape their representations of domesticity. It therefore offers a new method for understanding theatrical representations, based around a truly interdisciplinary study of the interaction between literary and historical methods. The plays she cites include Arden of Faversham, Two Lamentable Tragedies, A Woman Killed With Kindness, and A Yorkshire Tragedy.

This Concise Companion launches students into the study of English Renaissance literature through the central contexts that informed it. Places the poetry within contexts such as: economics; religion; empire and exploration; education, humanism and rhetoric; censorship and patronage; royal marriage and succession; treason and rebellion; “others” in England; private lives; cosmology and the body; and life-writing. Incorporates recent developments in the field, as well as work soon to be published. Entices students to explore the subject further. Provides new syntheses that will be of interest to scholars. All the contributors are highly regarded scholars and teachers.

Clark explores how real-life women's crimes were handled in the news media of an age before the invention of the newspaper, in ballads, pamphlets, and plays. It discusses those features of contemporary society which particularly influenced early modern crime reporting, such as attitudes to news, the law and women's rights, and ideas about the responsibility of the community for keeping order. It considers the problems of writing about transgressive women for audiences whose ideal woman was chaste, silent, and obedient.

In this innovative and learned study, Dennis Kezar examines how Renaissance poets conceive the theme of killing as a specifically representational and interpretive form of violence. Closely reading both major poets and lesser known authors of the early modern period, Kezar explores the ethical self-consciousness and accountability that attend literary killing, paying particular attention to the ways in which this reflection indicates the poet's understanding of his audience. Among the many poems through which Kezar explores the concept of authorial guilt elicited by violent representation are Skelton's Phyllyp Sparowe, Spenser's Faerie Queene, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, the multi-authored Witch of Edmonton, and Milton's Samson Agonistes.

Many critics hold that Shakespeare's King Lear is primarily a drama of meaningful suffering and redemption within a just universe ruled by providential higher powers. William Elton's King Lear and the Gods challenges the validity of this widespread optimistic view. Testing the prevailing view against the play's acknowledged sources, and analyzing the functions of the double plot, the characters, and the play's implicit ironies, Elton concludes that this standard interpretation constitutes a serious misreading of the tragedy.

On 19 April 1621, a woman named Elizabeth Sawyer was hanged at Tyburn. Her story was on the bookstalls within days and within weeks was adapted for the stage as The Witch of Edmonton. The devil stalks Edmonton in the shape of a large black dog and, just as Elizabeth Sawyer makes her demonic pact, the newlywed Frank Thorney enters into his own dark bargain in the shape of a second, bigamous marriage. Torn between sympathy for Sawyer and Thorney and a clear-eyed assessment of their crimes, the play was the finest and most nuanced treatment of witchcraft that the stage would see for centuries. Lucy Munro's introduction provides students and scholars with a detailed understanding of this complex play.