Spain alone produced a Renaissance drama comparable to that of England, yet the two nations were enemies, separated by the worldwide conflict of Catholics and Protestants. Major dramatists on both sides addressed the divisive issues: Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, and Calderon de la Barca in Spain; Shakespeare, Marlowe, Chapman, Massinger, and Middleton in England. In this comprehensive work, a distinguished authority on drama examines history plays, masques, and spectacles, with close attention to the changing development of the two national dramas, he directs us to the study of their suprrising similarities. The author's lucid exposition makes possible an assessment of the commentary on historical events provided by the dramatists. In the early years of the Thirty Years' War, he points out, dramtaists unknowingly carried on a dialogue now audible to us: Massinger and Middleton warn of Spain's intentions; Lope, Tirso, and Calderon provide assurance that their English coutnerparts were not alarmists. Goruping works chronologically by subject or thematic relevance to phases of Anglo-Spanish relations in broad European context, Professor Loftis examines Lope's plays about the campaigns fought by the Spanish Army of Flanders and Marlowe's and Chapman's plays about French history from 1572 to 1602. John Loftis is Margery Bailey Professor of English Emeritus at Stanford University. He is author of numerous works, including The Spanish Plays of Neoclassical England (Yale) and Sheridan and the Drama of Georgian England (Blackwell/Harvard). Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in the midst of an international florescence of drama, the English and Spanish theaters displayed striking and unique similarities. Although these two national theaters developed in relative isolation from each other, in both countries the plays synthesized native popular traditions and neoclassical learned conventions, a synthesis found neither in the more elite Italian and French drama of the time nor in any other European drama before or since. In Drama of a Nation, Walter Cohen illuminates the causes of this significant parallel development. Working from a Marxist perspective, Cohen seeks to establish correlations among individual plays, dramatic genres, theatrical institutions, cultural milieus, and political and economic systems. He argues that the drama owed its distinctiveness to the public theaters, especially of London and Madrid, which opened in the 1570s and closed, under government order, seventy years later. Both drama and theater in turn depended on a relative cultural homogeneity perpetuated by a state that primarily served the aristocracy. Absolutism, he maintains, first fostered and then undermined the public theater.

The specter of Spain rarely figures in our discussions of the drama that is often regarded as the crowning achievement of the English literary Renaissance. Yet dramatists such as Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare are exactly contemporary with England's protracted conflict with the Spanish Empire, a traditional ally turned archetypical adversary. Were these playwrights really so mute with respect to their nation's Spanish troubles? Or have we failed—for reasons cultural and institutional—to hear the Hispanophobic crosstalk that permeated the drama no less than England's other public discourses? Imagining an early modern public sphere in which dramatists cross pens with proto-imperialists, Protestant polemicists, recusant apologists, and a Machiavellian network of propagandists that included high government officials as well as journeyman printers, Eric Griffin uncovers the rhetorical strategies through which the Hispanophobic perspectives that shaped the so-called Black Legend of Spanish Cruelty were written into English cultural memory. At the same time, he demonstrates that the English were as ready to invoke Spain in the spirit of envious emulation as to demonize the Spanish other as an ethnic agent of intolerance and oppression. Interrogating the Whiggish orientation that has continued to view the English Renaissance through a haze of Anglo-American triumphalism, English Renaissance Drama and the Specter of Spain recovers the voices of key Spanish participants and the "Hispanized" Catholic resistance, revealing how England and Spain continued to draw upon shared traditions and cultural resources, even during the moments of their most storied confrontation.

Reflecting a variety of scholarly interests, this volume includes articles that range addressing Africans in Elizabeth London to chapel stagings, to the theory and practice of domestic tragedy. It also includes essays on the historical and theoretical issues relating to the evolution of dramatic texts and women at the theater.

Contains essays and studies by critics and cultural historians from both hemispheres as well as substantial reviews of books and essays dealing with medieval and early modern English drama before 1642. This volume addresses the conditions of theatrical ownership and dramatic competitionto those exploring stage movement and theatrical space.

Renaissance Drama, an annual interdisciplinary publication, is devoted to drama and performance as a central feature of Renaissance culture. The essays in each volume explore traditional canons of drama, the significance of performance (broadly construed) to early modern culture, and the impact of new forms of interpretation on the study of Renaissance plays, theater, and performance. This special issue of Renaissance Drama on "Italy in the Drama of Europe" primarily builds on the groundwork laid by Louise George Clubb, who showed that Italian drama was made in such a way as to facilitate its absorption and transformation into other traditions, even when it was not explicitly cited or referenced. "Italy in the Drama of Europe" takes up the reverberations of early modern Italian drama in the theaters of Spain, England, and France and in writings in Italian, English, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Latin, and German. Its scope is an example of the continuing force of and interest in one of the most rewarding, wide-ranging, and productive early modern aesthetic modes, and a tribute to the scholarship of Louise George Clubb, who, among others, recalled our attention to it.

RENAISSANCE DRAMA Experience the best and most noteworthy works of Renaissance drama This Third Edition of Renaissance Drama: An Anthology of Plays and Entertainments is the latest installment of a groundbreaking collection of non-Shakespearean Renaissance drama. Covering not only the popular drama of the period, Renaissance Drama includes masques, Lord Mayor shows, royal performances, and the popular mystery plays of the time. The selections fairly represent the variety and quality of Renaissance drama and they include works of scholarly and literary interest. Each work included in this edition comes with an insightful and illuminating introduction that places the piece in its historical and cultural context, with accompanying text explaining the significance of each piece and the ways in which it interacts with other works. New to this edition are: The famous entertainment for Elizabeth at Kenilworth George Peele’s remarkably inventive The Old Wives’ Tale The oft-forgotten history of Thomas of Woodstock, predecessor to Shakespeare’s Richard II John Lyly’s Gallathea, a work which explores gender and love, written for the Children’s Company at Saint Paul’s Ben Johnson’s Volpone and the controversial Epicoene Perfect for scholars, teachers, and readers of the English Renaissance, Renaissance Drama: An Anthology of Plays and Entertainments belongs on the bookshelves of anyone with even a passing interest in the drama of its time.

Introduces the conclusions of recent scholarship and research into theatrical conditions, conventions and concepts in the time of Shakespeare. The book begins with a discussion of the origins of early modern English drama and of the theatres that were built for it. Attitudes to theatre and to players, and what audiences expected of both, are explored in the contexts of the constraints of the acting space and the political culture. The book then looks at the structure and dynamics of the theatrical companies before concluding with a discussion of the genres of plays and the expectations of them that people (including writers) held. Appendices list brief details of the major dramatists of the time, and summarise the main historical and dramatic events.