Author Description

This is the eighth volume of a detailed play-by-play catalogue of drama written by English, Welsh, Irish, and Scottish authors during the 110 years between the English Reformation to the English Revolution, covering every known play, extant and lost, including some which have never before been identified. It is based on a complete, systematic survey of the whole of this body of work, presented in chronological order. Each entry contains comprehensive information about a single play: its various titles, authorship, and date; a summary of its plot, list of its roles, and details of the human and geographical world in which the fictional action takes place; a list of its sources, narrative and verbal, and a summary of its formal characteristics; details of its staging requirements; and an account of its early stage and textual history.The years covered in this volume saw the end of the careers of most of the great Jacobean dramatists, such as John Fletcher,Thomas Dekker, and Thomas Middleton, and the emergence of a new generation of playwrights, including James Shirley, Richard Brome, and John Ford. The period also saw the heyday of theatre at the English Jesuit College in St Omers and the ascendancy of French masquing at the English court.