Localizing Caroline Drama

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

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2. Introduction

   • Adam Zucker, Alan B. Farmer

   Pages 1-15

3. Canons and Classics: Publishing Drama in Caroline England

   • Alan B. Farmer, Zachary Lesser

   Pages 17-41

4. Politics and Aesthetic Pleasure in 1630s Theater

   • Kathleen E. McLuskie

   Pages 43-68

5. Reading Triumphs: Localizing Caroline Masques

   • Lauren Shohet

   Pages 69-96

6. Exeunt Fighting: Poets, Players, and Impresarios at the Caroline Hall Theaters

   • Martin Butler

   Pages 97-128

7. The St. Werburgh Street Theater, Dublin

   • Richard Dutton

   Pages 129-155

8. A Beast So Blurred: The Monstrous Favorite in Caroline Drama

   • Mario DiGangi

   Pages 157-181

9. Dancing Masters and the Production of Cosmopolitan Bodies in Caroline Town Comedy

   • Jean E. Howard

   Pages 183-211

10. The “Turks,” Caroline Politics, and Philip Massinger’s The Renegado

    • Benedict S. Robinson

    Pages 213-237

11. Back Matter

    Pages 239-259

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This book redefines the plays and theatrical culture of the years 1625 to 1642 as something more than simply post-Shakespearean in character. Scholars reveal the drama's mixture of political engagement, urbane cosmopolitanism, and commercial ingenuity. They urge us to recalibrate our histories to account for the innovations of the Caroline period.

• drama
• England
• theatre
• William Shakespeare
• British and Irish Literature

'This is a stimulating collection of essays on a period in dramatic history we know too little about. Each of the pieces here is driven by archival research that opens up new directions for inquiry. Because it challenges so much of what we assume about its subject, Localizing Caroline Drama will be indispensable for those interested in the early modern theater in England.' - Douglas Bruster, the University of Texas at Austin; author of Shakespeare and the Question of Culture

'I read this excellent collection with enormous pleasure. The editors have assembled a nice balance of contributors, representing a range of approaches, and the volume is filled with fascinating, fresh information and interpretations. Mining the neglected riches of Caroline drama, the contributors show us why we should return to these plays, seek out those we've never read, and scrap our tired generalizations about the period and its drama. The collection will inspire readers to teach these plays and to include them in their own research projects.' - Frances E. Dolan, the University of California, Davis

Localizing Caroline Drama offers a genuinely interdisciplinary cultural history, providing not a single grand overarching reading that treats the Caroline period simply as the harbinger of catastrophe but a set of consciously local- that is, focused and engaged rather than simply topical- analyses which refuse to be reduced solely to their points of identity yet which together form a volume that is more a multiply-authored monograph than a collection of essays. This timely and groundbreaking book locates Caroline theatrical culture in a range of places and contexts never before given their due: from Dublin to Tunis, from printshop to dancing manual, from commerce to crusade. 'Decadent' no more, Caroline drama emerges as a series of vibrant interventions in contemporary culture - aesthetic, political, sexual, economic, theological - far outstripping the limitations of the 'pre-revolutionary.' ' - Gordon McMullan, Reader in English, King's College London

ADAM ZUCKER is Assistant Professor of Early Modern literature at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has published on Ben Jonson and on the Caroline playwrights Richard Brome and Thomas Nabbes.

ALAN B. FARMER is Assistant Professor of English at The Ohio State University. He has published on printed drama in early modern England, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and the Caroline news trade.

Policies and ethics