Series: The Revels Plays

This edition presents a thoroughly reconsidered text based on collation of all known copies of the 1608 quarto, including material unnoticed by earlier editors. Textual analysis draws on detailed internal investigation and the printer's wider practice to propose that relatively improvisational procedures and a paper quota governed A Trick to Catch the Old One's printing operations. Discovery of an overlooked...

For many years Middleton's A Game at Chess was more notorious than read, considered rather a phenomenon of theatrical history than a pre-eminent piece of dramatic writing. A Game at Chess was a nine days' wonder, an exceptional play of King James' reign on account of its unprecedented representation of matters of state usually forbidden on the stage. The King's...

This is the new paperback edition of the first fully annotated volume of Ben Jonson's The Magnetic Lady, written in 1632. It contains textual and explanatory notes, and the text is modernised for student use. The introduction places the play in the context of Jonson's later dramatic and poetic works and discusses the political context of the Caroline court. A...

Philip Massinger's tragedy The Roman Actor was first performed in 1626, as King James I's reign came to an end and his son Charles I acceded to the throne. Three years later, when the play was published, relations between the king and many in parliament and the country had worsened. The Roman Actor—until recently neglected in the theatre but regarded...

Forker's critical edition fills the need for a fully annotated, historically contextualised and modernised text of the most important Elizabethan chronicle play apart from Shakespeare and Marlowe's Edward II. Now attributed definitely to George Peele, this drama helped to establish a major theatrical genre, raising contemporary political and religious issues through the dramatisation of medieval history in a compelling and...