This volume covers the period of Shakespeare’s own lifetime. It contains a long general survey of the English literary renaissance, and also an account of the social context of literature in the period. Then there follow a number of essays which consider in detail the work and importance of individual dramatists and poets and prose writers, but above all the dramatists, for this was their age: five of the essays are devoted to Shakespeare’s plays alone. Finally, this volume contains an appendix giving short author-biographies and, in each case, standard editions of author’s works, critical commentaries, and lists of books for further study and reference.

CONTENTS:

PART 1
The Social Setting
The Nation and the Drama, 1558-1625 – The Individual and the Order of Nature – The New Philosophy – Gentlemen and Clowns – Court and City – The Profession of Letters

PART 2
The Elizabethan Literary Renaissance
Shakespeare and His Age – The Background of Popular Taste – Humanism and Popular Taste: the 1590s – Rhetoric and Poetry – Jacobean Tragedy – Jacobean Prose

PART 3
Elizabethan Light Reading
Two Elizabethan Poets: Daniel and Ralegh
The Elizabethan Stage and Acting
The Plays of Christopher Marlowe
Shakespeare:
The Young Dramatist
The Middle Plays
„King Lear” and the Great Tragedies
The Last Plays
Changing Interpretations of Shakespeare
Ben Jonson, Dramatist
Chapman as Translator and Tragic Playwright
Tourneur and the Tragedy of Revenge
Middleton’s Tragedies
Bacon and the Advancement of Learning
Words and Music in Elizabethan England
Elizabethan and Jacobean Comedy
The Decline of Tragedy