Author Description

The Tudor period in England is commonly depicted by historians as the golden age in English history. This golden age represented one of the highest points of the English Renaissance and saw poetry, drama, music and literature rise to unprecedented heights. During those years such writers as William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Sir Philip Sidney, Roger Ascham, John Florio, Ben Jonson, George Peele, Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe and Thomas Kyd became very famous, and highly reputed. Now, think about what we know of those years, and of what we still don’t know, things that possibly happened—or didn’t ever occur…—in the dim lights of the most forgotten dusty streets at night, or in theatres, in the field of the otherworldly realms that at times border on our reality. Then, think of scary stories, weird or horrible occurrences in the crowded cities of the Renaissance: fairy-tale creatures, ghosts and monsters that also appeared in literary texts from those years. Think about the pirates authorized by their governments that chanced upon new fabled territories while exploring the seas and found strange beings, spies who investigated on some unexpected matters that were not of this world, or even unknown or fictitious tragedy plays that never got published, or were never produced for the stage, anyway, for one reason or another, in the late 1500s or early 1600s in England and throughout the rest of Europe. Then also think of those playwrights who achieved great renown, and of others whose names are now forgotten, maybe for unnatural reasons, or just because of some unearthly facts, as what fed their success later destroyed them… Among the stories included in this Anthology you’ll find, for example, poets/playwrights/spies traveling abroad, and sailing across the seas, to accomplish their secret tasks while stumbling into some strange, and unexpected, creatures; dark apparitions that approach the customers outside an old alehouse in London; strange peopl