"This pioneering collection of non-Shakespearean Renaissance drama is the first ever to cover the full sweep of dramatic performances in the England Shakespeare knew. Newly edited from manuscript and quarto, all the major playwrights are here - Marlowe, Jonson, Middleton, Webster - as well as new dramatic scripts and plays published for the first time.

Extensive footnotes clarify special terms, hidden meanings, and puns, and separate introductions to each of the 18 works show how cultural practices are represented and questioned in each separate work, whether it was designed for public or private performance, for great manor houses, town halls or the playhouse and streets of London itself.

A general introduction recalls the cultural history of the Shakespearean age in early modern England, but the works themselves show the age recording itself in the most powerful body of dramatic works England has produced."--BOOK JACKET.