Renaissance Drama

How did dramatists engage with the unprecedented levels of socio-cultural and intellectual change in Renaissance England, a time when ideas of identity, sexuality, social order, religion and state power were in flux? The book provides a contextual introduction to the work of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, Dekker, Webster, Middleton and Ford.

Brief, manageable and affordable, the books in the Contexts series fill the gap in students' knowledge of the historical facts, literary associations and wider cultural climate of the main literary periods. As well as offering a background in relevant social history, these texts include selected extracts from original documents to give a full flavour of the period in question.