Search results for ""author elizabeth"

"Upon a rock sat a maiden of such inexpressible beauty as to be supposed divine. . . . Her head inclined forward without moving, for she was looking fixedly at a young man who lay at her feet. The man was disfigured with wounds, but seemed to rouse himself a little as from a deep sleep, almost of death itself. Pain had clenched his eyes, but the sight of the maiden drew them toward her. He collected his breath, heaved a deep sigh, and murmured faintly. "My sweet," said he, "are you truly safe, or are you too a casualty of the war?" The Romance novel didn't begin with Kathleen Woodiwiss or even with the Bronte sisters. By the time Heliodorus wrote his Aethiopica—or Ethiopian Romance—in the third century, the genre was already impressively developed. Heliodorus launches his tale of love and the quirks of fate with a bizarre scene of blood, bodies, and booty on an Egyptian beach viewed through the eyes of a band of mystified pirates. The central love-struck characters are Charicles, the beautiful daughter of the Ethiopian queen, and Theagenes, a Thessalian aristocrat. The story unfolds with all the twists and devices any writer would employ today, with the added attractions of dreams, oracles, and exotic locales in the ancient Mediterranean and Africa. Hadas's was the first modern English-language translation of this story, which was first translated into English in 1587 and was a favorite among the Elizabethans. His version of this earliest extant Greek novel remains accessible and appealing.

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Facing persecution in early modern England, some Catholics chose exile over conformity. Some even cast their lot with foreign monarchs rather than wait for their own rulers to have a change of heart. This book studies the relationship forged by English exiles and Philip II of Spain. It shows how these expatriates, known as the “Spanish Elizabethans,” used the most powerful tools at their disposal—paper, pens, and presses—to incite war against England during the “messianic” phase of Philip’s reign, from the years leading up to the Grand Armada until the king’s death in 1598.Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez looks at English Catholic propaganda within its international and transnational contexts. He examines a range of long-neglected polemical texts, demonstrating their prominence during an important moment of early modern politico-religious strife and exploring the transnational dynamic of early modern polemics and the flexible rhetorical approaches required by exile. He concludes that while these exiles may have lived on the margins, their books were central to early modern Spanish politics and are key to understanding the broader narrative of the Counter-Reformation.Deeply researched and highly original, Radicals in Exile makes an important contribution to the study of religious exile in early modern Europe. It will be welcomed by historians of early modern Iberian and English politics and religion as well as scholars of book history.

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Facing persecution in early modern England, some Catholics chose exile over conformity. Some even cast their lot with foreign monarchs rather than wait for their own rulers to have a change of heart. This book studies the relationship forged by English exiles and Philip II of Spain. It shows how these expatriates, known as the “Spanish Elizabethans,” used the most powerful tools at their disposal—paper, pens, and presses—to incite war against England during the “messianic” phase of Philip’s reign, from the years leading up to the Grand Armada until the king’s death in 1598.Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez looks at English Catholic propaganda within its international and transnational contexts. He examines a range of long-neglected polemical texts, demonstrating their prominence during an important moment of early modern politico-religious strife and exploring the transnational dynamic of early modern polemics and the flexible rhetorical approaches required by exile. He concludes that while these exiles may have lived on the margins, their books were central to early modern Spanish politics and are key to understanding the broader narrative of the Counter-Reformation.Deeply researched and highly original, Radicals in Exile makes an important contribution to the study of religious exile in early modern Europe. It will be welcomed by historians of early modern Iberian and English politics and religion as well as scholars of book history.

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The Jew of Malta, written around 1590, can present a challenge for modern audiences. Hugely popular in its day, the play swings wildly and rapidly in genre, from pointed satire, to bloody revenge tragedy, to melodramatic intrigue, to dark farce and grotesque comedy. Although set in the Mediterranean island of Malta, the play evokes contemporary Elizabethan social tensions, especially the highly charged issue of London's much-resented community of resident merchant foreigners. Barabas, the enormously wealthy Jew of the play's title, appears initially victimized by Malta's Christian Governor, who quotes scripture to support the demand that Jews cede their wealth to pay Malta's tribute to the Turks. When he protests, Barabas is deprived of his wealth, his means of livelihood, and his house, which is converted to a nunnery. In response to this hypocritical extortion, Barabas launches a horrific (and sometimes hilarious) course of violence that goes well beyond revenge, using murderous tactics that include everything from deadly soup to poisoned flowers. The play's sometimes complex treatment of anti-Semitism and its relationship to Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice remain matters of continuing scholarly reflection. This new edition is expertly edited with an accompanying introduction that addresses issues of performance, cultural and historical context, interpretation and the key themes explored by the play. Arden Early Modern Drama editions offer the best in contemporary scholarship, providing a wealth of helpful and incisive commentary and guiding the reader to a deeper understanding and appreciation of the play. This edition provides: A clear and authoritative text Detailed on-page commentary notes A comprehensive, illustrated introduction to the play’s historical, cultural and performance contexts A bibliography of references and further reading

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The fascinating story of America's oldest thriving heritage language.Winner of the Dale W. Brown Book Award by the Young Center for Anabaptists and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown CollegeWhile most world languages spoken by minority populations are in serious danger of becoming extinct, Pennsylvania Dutch is thriving. In fact, the number of Pennsylvania Dutch speakers is growing exponentially, although it is spoken by less than one-tenth of one percent of the United States population and has remained for the most part an oral vernacular without official recognition or support. A true sociolinguistic wonder, Pennsylvania Dutch has been spoken continuously since the late eighteenth century despite having never been "refreshed" by later waves of immigration from abroad.In this probing study, Mark L. Louden, himself a fluent speaker of Pennsylvania Dutch, provides readers with a close look at the place of the language in the life and culture of two major subgroups of speakers: the "Fancy Dutch," whose ancestors were affiliated mainly with Lutheran and German Reformed churches, and traditional Anabaptist sectarians known as the "Plain people"—the Old Order Amish and Mennonites.Drawing on scholarly literature, three decades of fieldwork, and ample historical documents—most of which have never before been made accessible to English-speaking readers—this is the first book to offer a comprehensive look at this unlikely linguistic success story.

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In this new book, Arthur F. Marotti analyzes some of the rhetorical and imaginative means by which the Catholic minority and the Protestant majority defined themselves and their religious and political antagonists in early modern England. He considers Catholic writings that have been relatively neglected, as well as the discourse of anti-Catholicism. Straddling the boundary of history and literature, this study offers an intriguing cultural history that focuses on the ideologized fantasies and language found on both sides of the early modern Christian religious divide. Marotti focuses on the period between the arrival of the first Jesuit missionaries in England in 1580 and the climax of ongoing religious conflict in the Restoration-era Popish Plot and the 1688 Glorious Revolution. In a series of thematically focused essays, he covers such issues as the relationship of print culture to the residual Catholic culture in Elizabethan England; recusant women, Jesuits and the cultural othering of Catholics, martyrdom accounts, the manuscript circulation of Catholic martyrdom accounts; polemically charged Catholic and Protestant narratives of conversion; and the depiction of Catholic plots or outrages and providential Protestant deliverances in the construction of Protestant English history and identity. This important and eagerly anticipated book makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of Catholicism and anti-Catholicism in the early modern period. It also points to a cultural dynamic in Anglo-American history that persisted far into the modern era.

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A powerful collection of chilling crime with new, modern stories and classic tales reaching back into ancient, medieval, Elizabethan and Victorian fiction: from Oedipus Rex and Thomas More's story of the Princes in the Tower to Scheherazade's 'The Three Apples' and the chilling crime fiction of Dickens, Poe, Henry James, Baroness Orczy, Wilkie Collins and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The new, contemporary and notable writers featured are: Jeremy Bates, Jesse Bethea, Allan Burd, Laura J. Campbell, Ramsey Campbell, D.R. Cartwright, Robert Ford, Tyler Jones, Theresa Konwinski, Alexes Lester, Robert Lopresti, Tom Mead, Marshall J. Moore, Jane Nightshade, Christi Nogle, Michael Penncavage, Zandra Renwick, Dan Stout, and Steve Toase. The Flame Tree Gothic Fantasy, Classic Stories and Epic Tales collections bring together the entire range of myth, folklore and modern short fiction. Highlighting the roots of suspense, supernatural, science fiction and mystery stories, the books in Flame Tree Collections series are beautifully presented, perfect as a gift and offer a lifetime of reading pleasure.

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A History of Modern Britain by Andrew Marr confronts head-on the victory of shopping over politics. This edition also includes an extra chapter charting the course from Blair to Brexit.It tells the story of how the great political visions of New Jerusalem or a second Elizabethan Age, rival idealisms, came to be defeated by a culture of consumerism, celebrity and self-gratification. In each decade, political leaders think they know what they are doing, but find themselves confounded. Every time, the British people turn out to be stroppier and harder to herd than predicted. Throughout, Britain is a country on the edge – first of invasion, then of bankruptcy, then on the vulnerable front line of the Cold War and later in the forefront of the great opening up of capital and migration now reshaping the world. This history follows all the political and economic stories, but deals too with comedy, cars, the war against homosexuals, Sixties anarchists, oil-men and punks, Margaret Thatcher's wonderful good luck, political lies and the true heroes of British theatre.

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A complete and unabridged full-color edition of the classic sourcebook on ornamental designFirst published in 1856, The Grammar of Ornament remains a design classic. Its inspiration came from pioneering British architect and designer Owen Jones (1809–1874), who produced a comprehensive design treatise for the machine age, lavishly illustrated in vivid chromolithographic color. Jones made detailed observations of decorative arts on his travels in Europe, the Middle East, and in his native London, where he studied objects on display at the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in 1851 and at local museums. His aim was to improve the quality of Western design by changing the habits of Victorian designers, who indiscriminately mixed elements from a wide variety of sources.Jones's resulting study is a comprehensive analysis of styles of ornamental design, presenting key examples ranging from Maori tattoos, Egyptian columns, and Greek borders to Byzantine mosaic, Indian embroidery, and Elizabethan carvings. At once splendidly Victorian and insistently modern, The Grammar of Ornament celebrates objects of beauty from across time periods and continents, and remains an indispensable sourcebook today.

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When Olivia Shaw’s mother dies, the sophisticated food editor is astonished to learn she’s inherited a centuries-old English estate—and a title to go with it. Raw with grief and reeling from the knowledge that her reserved mother hid something so momentous, Olivia leaves San Francisco and crosses the pond to unravel the mystery of a lifetime. One glance at the breathtaking Rosemere Priory and Olivia understands why the manor, magnificent even in disrepair, was the subject of her mother’s exquisite paintings. What she doesn’t understand is why her mother never mentioned it to her. As Olivia begins digging into her mother’s past, she discovers that the peeling wallpaper, debris-laden halls, and ceiling-high Elizabethan windows covered in lush green vines hide unimaginable secrets. Although personal problems and her life back home beckon, Olivia finds herself falling for the charming English village and its residents. But before she can decide what Rosemere’s and her own future hold, Olivia must first untangle the secrets of her past.

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From heart-stopping accounts of apparitions, manifestations and supernatural phenomena, to first-hand encounters with phantoms and spirits, this collection of spooky sightings from around the city of Plymouth is guaranteed to make your blood run cold. Richly illustrated with over 100 pictures, Haunted Plymouth contains a chilling range of tales. From the ghost of Sir Francis Drake on Plymouth Hoe, poltergeist activity in one of the city’s Elizabethan inns and the shade of a lady in white at Widey Court, to French prisoners of war at Devonport Dockyard and a phantom pair legs at a Mutley house, this gathering of ghostly goings-on is bound to captivate everyone interested in the paranormal history of Plymouth and will chill all but the sturdiest of hearts.

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HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. ‘Orlando had become a woman – there is no denying it. But in every other respect, Orlando remained precisely as he had been. The change of sex, though it altered their future, did nothing whatever to alter their identity.’ Boisterous and defiant, Virginia Woolf’s queer classic subverts restraints of genre, time and gender. Traversing the complexities of human emotion and society’s obsession with conformity, the wild adventures of Woolf’s gender fluid hero begin in Elizabethan England and end in 1928 – yet Orlando ages just 36 years. A satirical romp that spans over three hundred years of history, Woolf’s fantastical biography was decades ahead of its time.

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A practical approach to breaking through the barriers of restraint and incomprehension when faced with Shakespeare. Taking many of the techniques explored in her international bestseller Freeing The Natural Voice, in this companion volume Kristin Linklater shows how to apply them to the exploration and speaking of Shakespeare’s language. Beginning with exercises designed to break long-held habits and allow an emotional rather than intellectual relationship to Elizabethan language, she analyses Shakespeare's strategies for creating character, story and meaning through figures of speech, iambic pentameter, rhyme and the alternation of verse and prose. Using copious examples from the plays, Linklater offers her readers the tools to increase understanding and make Shakespeare's words their own.

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Last Acts argues that the Elizabethan and Jacobean theater offered playwrights, actors, and audiences important opportunities to practice arts of dying. Psychoanalytic and new historicist scholars have exhaustively documented the methods that early modern dramatic texts and performances use to memorialize the dead, at times even asserting that theater itself constitutes a form of mourning. But early modern plays also engage with devotional traditions that understand death less as an occasion for suffering or grief than as an action to be performed, well or badly. Active deaths belie narratives of helplessness and loss through which mortality is too often read and instead suggest how marginalized and constrained subjects might participate in the political, social, and economic management of life. Some early modern strategies for dying resonate with descriptions of politicized biological life in the recent work of Giorgio Agamben and Roberto Esposito, or with ecclesiastical forms. Yet the art of dying is not solely a discipline imposed upon recalcitrant subjects. Since it offers suffering individuals a way to enact their deaths on their own terms, it discloses both political and dramatic action in their most minimal manifestations. Rather than mournfully marking what we cannot recover, the practice of dying reveals what we can do, even in death. By analyzing representations of dying in plays by Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Jonson, alongside devotional texts and contemporary biopolitical theory, Last Acts shows how theater reflects, enables, and contests the politicization of life and death.

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In Printing the Middle Ages Siân Echard looks to the postmedieval, postmanuscript lives of medieval texts, seeking to understand the lasting impact on both the popular and the scholarly imaginations of the physical objects that transmitted the Middle Ages to the English-speaking world. Beneath and behind the foundational works of recovery that established the canon of medieval literature, she argues, was a vast terrain of books, scholarly or popular, grubby or beautiful, widely disseminated or privately printed. By turning to these, we are able to chart the differing reception histories of the literary texts of the British Middle Ages. For Echard, any reading of a medieval text, whether past or present, amateur or academic, floats on the surface of a complex sea of expectations and desires made up of the books that mediate those readings. Each chapter of Printing the Middle Ages focuses on a central textual object and tells its story in order to reveal the history of its reception and transmission. Moving from the first age of print into the early twenty-first century, Echard examines the special fonts created in the Elizabethan period to reproduce Old English, the hand-drawn facsimiles of the nineteenth century, and today's experiments with the digital reproduction of medieval objects; she explores the illustrations in eighteenth-century versions of Guy of Warwick and Bevis of Hampton; she discusses nineteenth-century children's versions of the Canterbury Tales and the aristocratic transmission history of John Gower's Confessio Amantis; and she touches on fine press printings of Dante, Froissart, and Langland.

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A delicious collection of great British puddings from the National Trust, this new edition has been updated and expanded to include more mouthwatering colour photography. A delicious collection of great British puddings from the National Trust, this new edition has been updated and expanded to include more mouthwatering colour photography. The traditional pudding has always been an integral part of Britain's culinary heritage. This collection of established favourites and little-known but great recipes traces the history of the pudding from the earliest medieval jellies through the elaborate fruit pies of the Elizabethans, the elegant ice creams and custards of the Georgians, and the substantial puddings of the Victorians. All the best recipes that have stood the test of time are featued here, from Chocolate Puddle Pudding, Icky Sticky Toffee Sponge and Jam Roly Poly to Old English Trifle, Lemon Meringue Pie and Eton Mess. Bursting with delicious baked puddings, fools and syllabubs, ice creams,custards and trifles, pies and tarts and of course, steamed puddings that have been served over the centuries, this book will tempt anyone who enjoys a healthy dose of our great British puddings.

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Many readers first encounter Shakespeare's plays in a book rather than a theater. Yet Shakespeare was through and through a man of the stage. So what do we lose when we leave Shakespeare the practitioner behind, and what do we learn when we think about his plays as dramas to be performed? David Bevington answers these questions with "This Wide and Universal Theater", which explores how Shakespeare's plays were produced both in his own time and in succeeding centuries. Making use of historical documents and the play scripts themselves, Bevington brings Shakespeare's original stagings to life. He explains how the Elizabethan playhouse conveyed a sense of place using minimal scenery, from the Forest of Arden in "As You Like It" to the tavern in "Henry IV, Part I". Moving beyond Shakespeare's lifetime, Bevington shows the prodigious lengths to which eighteenth- and nineteenth-century companies went to produce spectacular effects, from flying witches in "Macbeth" to terrifying storms punctuating "King Lear". To bring the book into the present, Bevington considers recent productions on both stage and screen, when character and language have taken precedence over spectacle. This volume brings a lifetime of study to bear on a remarkably underappreciated aspect of Shakespeare's art.

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Many readers first encounter Shakespeare's plays in a book rather than a theater. Yet Shakespeare was through and through a man of the stage. So what do we lose when we leave Shakespeare the practitioner behind, and what do we learn when we think about his plays as dramas to be performed? David Bevington answers these questions with "This Wide and Universal Theater", which explores how Shakespeare's plays were produced both in his own time and in succeeding centuries. Making use of historical documents and the play scripts themselves, Bevington brings Shakespeare's original stagings to life. He explains how the Elizabethan playhouse conveyed a sense of place using minimal scenery, from the Forest of Arden in "As You Like It" to the tavern in "Henry IV, Part I". Moving beyond Shakespeare's lifetime, Bevington shows the prodigious lengths to which eighteenth- and nineteenth-century companies went to produce spectacular effects, from flying witches in "Macbeth" to terrifying storms punctuating "King Lear". To bring the book into the present, Bevington considers recent productions on both stage and screen, when character and language have taken precedence over spectacle. This volume brings a lifetime of study to bear on a remarkably underappreciated aspect of Shakespeare's art.

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Was there such a thing as a modern notion of race in the English Renaissance, and, if so, was skin color its necessary marker? In fact, early modern texts described human beings of various national origins—including English—as turning white, brown, tawny, black, green, or red for any number of reasons, from the effects of the sun's rays or imbalance of the bodily humors to sexual desire or the application of makeup. It is in this cultural environment that the seventeenth-century London Gazette used the term "black" to describe both dark-skinned African runaways and dark-haired Britons, such as Scots, who are now unquestioningly conceived of as "white." In Shades of Difference, Sujata Iyengar explores the cultural mythologies of skin color in a period during which colonial expansion and the slave trade introduced Britons to more dark-skinned persons than at any other time in their history. Looking to texts as divergent as sixteenth-century Elizabethan erotic verse, seventeenth-century lyrics, and Restoration prose romances, Iyengar considers the construction of race during the early modern period without oversimplifying the emergence of race as a color-coded classification or a black/white opposition. Rather, "race," embodiment, and skin color are examined in their multiple contexts—historical, geographical, and literary. Iyengar engages works that have not previously been incorporated into discussions of the formation of race, such as Marlowe's "Hero and Leander" and Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis." By rethinking the emerging early modern connections between the notions of race, skin color, and gender, Shades of Difference furthers an ongoing discussion with originality and impeccable scholarship.

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The Falklands War was a turning point in modern British history. On the one hand, it was what some considered to be the 'last of the great Elizabethan adventures', with the Royal Navy pulling off an incredible feat of maritime warfare, under the most appallingly risky circumstances. On the other hand, it was the first war of the modern age, using satellite surveillance, computer-driven missiles, night observation devices, and all the technologically developed power of modern weaponry. It was also a conflict that could so easily have gone terribly wrong for British forces. Instead, it was a resounding military success.And yet, the conflict's significance is often overlooked. Drawing upon the vast resources of the Imperial War Museum's sound archive, which contains thousands of interviews with both soldiers and civilians, both British and Argentinean, Forgotten Voices of the Falkands War redresses the balance, presenting a complete oral history of the Falklands War. From the initial invasion of the islands to the British landings, the sinking of the Belgrano to brutal combat at Goose Green, the Argentinean surrender through to its aftermath, the book is a unique and essential chronicle of the conflict told from all sides and perspectives. It includes the visceral and often terrifying experiences of the combatants as well as the poignant and sometimes surreal recollections of the islanders caught in the middle.Utilising all the qualities that have made the Forgotten Voices series so popular, Hugh McManners, who himself fought in the Falklands War and witnessed its brutality first-hand, has created the definitive oral history on the subject.

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An around-the-world tour of ancient Christmas celebrations, Pagan Solstice customs, and magical seasonal plants. Whether viewed as a mid-winter observance of the Winter Solstice or a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, for millennia cultures have taken time out to honour the darkest days of the year with lights, foods, and festivities. In ancient Egypt, people decorated their homes with greenery at the festival of the re-birth of the God Horus. The ancient Romans decorated their homes with vines and ivy and shared gifts, especially candles, at the midwinter festival of Saturnalia. In Scandinavian and Germanic cultures, the Yule Log was burned in the hearth, fruit orchards were wassailed, and sheaves of wheat were displayed to carry luck into the New Year. In Celtic cultures, mummers and guisers went door to door and European mistletoe (Viscum album) was gathered by Druids as a medicinal and magical aid. Presenting an around-the-world tour of ancient Christmas celebrations, Pagan Solstice customs, and magical seasonal plants, Ellen Evert Hopman shares lore, recipes, rituals, and crafts you can make as a family activity to enliven your Yuletide observance. She explores the origins of the Christmas tree and Santa Claus, as well as female gift bringers, holiday Spirits, and Yuletide animals. She shows how to make a Yule Log and decorate your house with greenery and grain weavings. She explains how to perform Winter Solstice divinations and cook traditional foods and drinks such as Wassail and Elizabethan gingerbread cookies. And she looks in depth at the medicinal and magical properties of the many herbs, barks, and berries associated with the Christmas and Yuletide season such as Frankincense and Myrrh, Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Hibiscus, Bayberry, and many more. Woven throughout with mystical seasonal lore, this guide offers practical and magical ways to celebrate and honour the darkest days of the year.

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What do the Dead Sea Scrolls and frog overlays have to do with performing Shakespeare? They're both part of Louis Fantasia's approach in Instant Shakespeare. Mr. Fantasia, the first American to direct at the Shakespeare Globe Centre and a distinguished member of the international theatre community, has developed a pragmatic and uniquely American performance technique. Expanded and refined in performances and workshops throughout the world, Instant Shakespeare allows performers, directors, and teachers of all cultures and levels of experience to demystify Shakespeare and perform his texts in ways that are clear, fresh, and unpretentious. Mr. Fantasia's methods are solidly grounded in a rigorous analysis of the text and structure of Shakespeare's plays, and enriched by his insight into Elizabethan performance practices gleaned from his intimate association with the reconstruction of the Globe. Through Instant Shakespeare, novices and professionals alike achieve the textual clarity, nuanced characters, and dynamic actions that drive the most vigorous Shakespearean performances. Mr. Fantasia's respectful but irreverent approach pinpoints the shortcomings of contemporary Shakespeare practice and training, particularly generic and postmodern interpretations, and confronts theatre artists with the importance of conscious personal responsibility for the creative process. Employing analogies from music and architecture, he insists upon the hard and sometimes tedious work that necessarily underlies solid artistic choices. Mr. Fantasia shows how to understand Shakespeare's vocabulary as well as the structure and essential dramatic event of each play. He provides exercise monologues, exercise scenes, and tools for textual analysis; explains correct breathing; and lays out his philosophies of training and performance.

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By examining representations of women on stage and in the many printed materials aimed at them, Karen Newman shows how female subjectivity—both the construction of the gendered subject and the ideology of women's subjection to men—was fashioned in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Her emphasis is not on "women" so much as on the category of "femininity" as deployed in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Through the critical lens of poststructuralism, Newman reads anatomies, conduct and domesticity handbooks, sermons, homilies, ballads, and court cases to delineate the ideologies of femininity they represented and produced. Arguing that drama, as spectacle, provides a peculiarly useful locus for analyzing the management of femininity, Newman considers the culture of early modern London to reveal how female subjectivity was fashioned and staged in the plays of Shakespeare, Jonson, and others.

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Playing Shakespeare’s Monarchs and Madmen is the third volume in the Peter Lang series, Playing Shakespeare’s Characters. As in the previous volumes, a broad range of contributors (actors, directors, scholars, educators, etc.) analyze the concepts of monarchy, leadership, melancholy and madness with not only references to Elizabethan and Jacobean studies, but also to Trump, Brexit, cross-gender and multi-cultural casting. What does it mean to “play the king” in the 21st century? What is the role of an “all-licensed” Fool in the age of spin? Who gets to represent the power dynamics in Shakespeare’s plays? This volume looks at the Henrys, Richards, Hamlets, Lears and various other dukes and monarchs and explores the ways in which men—and women—approach these portrayals of power and the lessons they hold for us today.

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Sir Thomas Stukeley, the notorious English courtier, pirate, adventurer and soldier, died at the Battle of Alcazar in Morocco in 1578, while serving in the army of King Sebastian of Portugal. This volume comprises the first modern-spelling, annotated edition of two plays in which he is a major character: George Peele's 'The Battle of Alcazar' (c.1588), and the anonymous 'Famous History of the Life and Death of Captain Thomas Stukeley' (c.1596).In his extensive introduction and commentary, Charles Edelman discusses the plays' authorship, their many textual problems, and what they reveal about Elizabethan performance practices. He also challenges most of the traditional assumptions about them. This edition shows that both works, long held to be unperformable, are instead fascinating and worthwhile representatives of the most exciting age in the history of the theatre.

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This entertaining and fact-packed guide provides all the information you’ll need to travel back in time to Elizabethan London – a booming city of courtiers, cutthroats, merchants, beggars, lawyers, dramatists, apprentices and adventurers. Find out the best way to the capital and where to stay. Saunter over London Bridge, with its hundreds of shops and houses. Glimpse Her Majesty at Whitehall, Europe’s largest palace. Watch the finest plays and players at the Rose Theatre, and marvel at the bustle of business in the Royal Exchange. Go down to Greenwich to stand on the deck of the Golden Hind, the ship that Sir Francis Drake sailed around the world. This intriguingly addictive guide provides all you need to know to sightsee, shop and meet the famous in the capital of a nation stirring to greatness.

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A sparkling anthology celebrating sport in all its variety; from elite rugby and football to rural games on the village green, from an exclusive golf club to the sheer pleasure of a bicycle ride.Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, pocket-sized classics with ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is edited and introduced by sports historian, Professor Martin Polley.A treat for sports fans, dip into this wide-ranging, entertaining collection of classic writing drawn from journalism, diaries, drama, fiction and more. On Your Marks spans from Elizabethan Shakespeare to twentieth-century George Orwell and features Daniel Defoe on horse racing, Jane Austen on baseball, Lewis Carroll on croquet and many more.

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The Great British Dig brings history and archaeology closer to home than ever before. Each week a team of archaeologists (led by presenter Hugh Dennis) descend on streets and gardens the length and breadth of the country to discover the treasures we have been living right on top of without realising. In this official tie-in book, on-screen expert Dr Chloë Duckworth digs deeper into the sites the show visited, as well as giving practical tips and advice for anyone who wants to have a go themselves. Uncovering a lost world of human stories just a few shovelfuls beneath our feet, Chloë explores the team’s techniques in fascinating detail, offering new insights and explanations about the discoveries made. As well as revealing the actual frontier of the Roman Empire in Britain, the Tudor palace of an Elizabethan spymaster, a revolutionary Victorian prison, a Second World War military base, and a prehistoric village under a school playing field, Chloë includes lots of information for anyone wanting to give it a go themselves. The book is packed with features, tip boxes and practical advice about digging in your own back garden, researching your local area for clues about what might have been there centuries ago, and dating things you may find. Highly illustrated, the book includes images never seen on screen, as well as archive photos and illustrations that bring history to life, and identification guides to bones, pottery, tools, coins and other things you might come across yourself. Foreword by Hugh Dennis, presenter of The Great British Dig.

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Why did Elizabethan adventurers believe that the interior of America hid vast caches of gold? Who started the rumor that British officers purchased revolutionary white women's scalps, packed them by the bale, and shipped them to their superiors? And why are people today still convinced that white settlers-hardly immune as a group to the disease-routinely distributed smallpox-tainted blankets to the natives? Rumor-spread by colonists and Native Americans alike-ran rampant in early America. In Groundless, historian Gregory Evans Dowd explores why half-truths, deliberate lies, and outrageous legends emerged in the first place, how they grew, and why they were given such credence throughout the New World. Arguing that rumors are part of the objective reality left to us by the past-a kind of fragmentary archival record-he examines how uncertain news became powerful enough to cascade through the centuries. Drawing on specific case studies and tracing recurring rumors over many generations, Dowd explains the seductive power of unreliable stories in the eastern North American frontiers from the sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. The rumors studied here-some alluring, some frightening-commanded attention and demanded action. They were all, by definition, groundless, but they were not all false, and they influenced the classic issues of historical inquiry: the formation of alliances, the making of revolutions, the expropriation of labor and resources, and the origins of war.

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This is the first volume of the Victoria History of the County of Somerset to be pub-lished since 1911, and is the result of the revival of the History under the patronage of the County Council. It provides a com-prehensive and detailed account of twenty-one parishes towards the southern boundary of the county and lying in the ancient hundreds of Pitney, Somerton, Tintinhull, and part of Kingsbury (East). The land is partly in the valleys of the Parrett and the Yeo and partly on the hills. The lower ground, still liable to flood on occasions, has gradually over the years been drained and converted into the 'moors' that are a feature of the area and provide unusually rich grazing. From the hills in the south comes the celebrated Ham stone. The volume includes the history of two small towns that can each claim to have served at some time as the county centre: Somerton, whose name is linked with that of the county, and the diminutive Ilchester at the junction of the Foss Way and another Roman road. Lang-port, a commercial centre on the navigable river Parrett, is also an ancient settlement. Other parishes that figure in the volume include Montacute, with its fine Elizabethan mansion, and Muchelney, with the remains of its medieval abbey, and there are National Trust properties at Lytes Cary (in Charlton Mackrell) and Tintinhull. The test is illus-trated with line-drawn maps and with plates that include both photographs, old and new, and reproductions of paintings and drawings.

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Sumptuous photographs by designer Ashley Hicks (who recently photographed the interiors of Buckingham Palace) capture the smouldering spirit of the place: from the state rooms, which house possibly the finest collection of royal Stuart furniture in the world, to the private apartments and gardens, to the behind-the-scenes labyrinth of cellars and attics. Knole provides a window onto English history. The characters who people the pages of the book the grave Elizabethan statesman, the good-for-nothing gadabout at the seedy Court of King James I, the dashing Cavalier, the Restoration rake, the 3rd Duke, that magnificent and melancholy representative of the ancien regime, the whiskery and dark-hearted Mortimer who caused three nights of rioting in 1884 by closing the park to visitors are all representative of their age (members of a family described by Vita Sackville-West as a race too prodigal, too amorous, too weak, too indolent, and too melancholy : in short, a rotten lot, and nearly all stark staring mad. Of course, Vita s torn legacy with the property prompted her dear friend Virginia Woolf to pen Orlando, furthering the place s fame and glamorous lustre. Similarly, the architectural and decorative features of the house, so splendidly revealed by Ashley s photographs, illustrate the different tastes of successive ages, from Thomas Sackville s seventeenth-century makeover of a ramshackle medieval mansion to an early twentieth-century suite of rooms designed in the Bohemian style. Knole has never been illuminated in this way before.

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This highly readable and informative collection of the best of British art showcases magnificent portraits by Thomas Gainsborough and Stanley Spencer; landscapes by J. M. W. Turner and David Hockney; satire by William Hogarth and Gilbert & George; sculpture by Henry Moore and Rachel Whiteread; and the latest works by Grayson Perry and Damien Hirst. Each artist is presented in a double-page spread that features a major work, details from the work, a brief biography and fascinating insights into the artist's life and times. Lucinda Hawksley's engaging survey compares the skill of the Elizabethan miniaturists and the magnificence of the High Victorians with the grit of post-war British modernists and the best of the Young British Artists, whose fearless approach to controversial themes make them worthy inheritors of the great traditions of British art.

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History lessons have never been so hilarious thanks to this collection of insults through the ages – the targets of your barrage of vintage invective won’t know what’s hit them. Ever wanted to ‘air the lungs (1)’ like a cowboy or dreamed of channelling the wit of Shakespeare to deliver that killer put-down to an Elizabethan fustilarian (2)? Are you too much of a medieval scobberlotcher (3) to realise this ambition? Well, you’re in luck, because The History of Insults has some of the finest put-downs of all time – starting with the Ancient Romans and Greeks and working through the centuries to modern times. This means you can dish out the best burns to bacon-fed bell swaggers (4) to your heart’s content. As they used to say in 19th-century London, ‘It’s more than enough to make a stuffed bird laugh!’ (1) Swear; (2) Scoundrel; (3) Lazy person; (4) Fat, loudmouth bullies

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This brilliant Revision Guide is packed with clear, in-depth study notes for GCSE OCR B History (Schools History Project). All the most popular Depth Study, Period Study and Thematic Study options are included, and we've covered a wide range of historical eras in Britain, Europe and the wider world. There's also plenty of top advice on the skills needed for each section of the exam as well as online quizzes for students to test their knowledge on different topics. We've even thrown in a free Online Edition of the whole book - don't say we never spoil you! The topics covered in this Revision Guide are: - The People's Health c. 1250-present - Migrants to Britain c. 1250-present - The Making of America 1789-1900 - The Norman Conquest 1065-1087 - The Elizabethans 1580-1603 - Living under Nazi Rule 1933-1945

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Investigates Shakespeare's mode of composition and the way contemporary psychology informs dramatic representation through ekphrasis Describes Shakespeare's own ingenuity and his dramatizations of ingenuity according to classical and renaissance accounts of this activity Explains and illustrates in his plays the function of fantasy in reading the external world, as described in contemporary psychology Participates in the current scholarly interest in the intertextuality of theatrical scripts Traces Shakespeare's adaptations of the hybrid genre tragicomedy from his problem plays" to The Winter's Tale and demonstrates his use of the writings of Giraldi Cinzio and Battista Guarini to give unique shape to this late work Drawing inspiration from Robert Greene's deathbed attack on Shakespeare as "an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers," The Bodger (Elizabethan variant of "botcher," "mender," "patcher") argues that Shakespeare's dramas are compositions of "shreds and patches" pieced together by a mind of extraordinary synthetic acuity. Such patches include passages of dialogue that, as described in the sixteenth century, "lead objects before our eyes" by means of ekphrasis. The book offers substantial art-historical research into the only visual artist named by Shakespeare, Giulio Romano--who performs an important role in The Winter's Tale as the alleged sculptor of a statue of the dead Queen. Giulio, heir to Raphael's workshop, is known primarily as a painter and architect. My research has revealed that he was also a designer of sculpture. Applying historical and theoretical materials to close readings of several plays, I focus on the most critical issues of The Winter's Tale King Leontes' sudden fit of jealousy; Shakespeare's introduction of a surrogate playwright in the personification of Time, who refashions the play from tragedy to comedy, assisted by a behind-the-scenes female ghost writer; and the Queen's statue amazingly "coming to life" through an interactive declaration of faith. "

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Taking cross-disciplinary and comparative approaches to the volume’s subject, this exciting collection of essays offers a reassessment of Shakespeare’s erotic and Ovidian mythology within classical and continental aesthetic contexts. Through extensive examination of mythological visual and textual material, scholars explore the transmission and reinvention of Ovidian eroticism in Shakespeare’s plays to show how early modern artists and audiences collectively engaged in redefining ways of thinking pleasure. Within the collection’s broad-ranging investigation of erotic mythology in Renaissance culture, each chapter analyses specific instances of textual and pictorial transmission, reception, and adaptation. Through various critical strategies, contributors trace Shakespeare’s use of erotic material to map out the politics and aesthetics of pleasure, unravelling the ways in which mythology informs artistic creation. Received acceptions of neo-platonic love and the Petrarchan tensions of unattainable love are revisited, with a focus on parodic and darker strains of erotic desire, such as Priapic and Dionysian energies, lustful fantasy and violent eros. The dynamics of interacting tales is explored through their structural ability to adapt to the stage. Myth in Renaissance culture ultimately emerges not merely as near-inexhaustible source material for the Elizabethan and Jacobean arts, but as a creative process in and of itself.

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At the cutting edge of new social and demographic history, this book provides a detailed picture of the most comprehensive system of poor relief operated by any Elizabethan town. Well before the Poor Laws of 1598 and 1601, Hadleigh, Suffolk—a thriving woolen cloth center with a population of roughly 3,000—offered a complex array of assistance to many of its residents who could not provide for themselves: orphaned children, married couples with more offspring than they could support or supervise, widows, people with physical or mental disabilities, some of the unemployed, and the elderly. Hadleigh's leaders also attempted to curb idleness and vagrancy and to prevent poor people who might later need relief from settling in the town. Based upon uniquely full records, this study traces 600 people who received help and explores the social, religious, and economic considerations that made more prosperous people willing to run and pay for this system. Relevant to contemporary debates over assistance to the poor, the book provides a compelling picture of a network of care and control that resulted in the integration of public and private forms of aid.

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In Subjects of Advice, Ivan Lupić uncovers the rich interconnectedness of dramatic art and the culture of counsel in the early modern period. While counsel was an important form of practical knowledge, with concrete political consequences, it was also an ingrained cultural habit, a feature of obligatory mental, moral, and political hygiene. To be a Renaissance subject, Lupić claims, one had to reckon with the advice of others. Lupić examines this reckoning in a variety of sixteenth-century dramatic contexts. The result is an original account of the foundational role that counsel played in the development of Renaissance drama. Lupić begins by considering the figure of Thomas More, whose influential argument about counsel as a form of performance in Utopia set the agenda for the entire century. Resisting linear narratives and recovering, instead, the simultaneity of radically different kinds of dramatic experience, he shows the vitality of later dramatic engagements with More's legacy through an analysis of the moral interlude staged within Sir Thomas More, a play possibly coauthored by Shakespeare. More also helps explain the complex use of counsel in Senecan drama, from the neo-Latin plays of George Buchanan, discussed in connection with Buchanan's political writings, to the historical tragedies of the mid-sixteenth century. If tyranny and exemplarity are the keywords for early Elizabethan drama of counsel, for the plays of Christopher Marlowe it is friendship. Lupić considers Marlowe's interest in friendship and counsel, most notably in Edward II, alongside earlier dramatic treatments, thus exposing the pervasive fantasy of the ideal counselor as another self. Subjects of Advice concludes by placing King Lear in relation to its dramatic sources to demonstrate Shakespeare's deliberate dispersal of counsel throughout his play. Counsel's customary link to plain and fearless speech becomes in Shakespeare's hands a powerful instrument of poetic and dramatic expression.

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In uncovering the origin of the designation 'University Wits', Bob Logan examines the characteristics of the Wits and their influence on the course of Elizabethan drama. For the first time, Christopher Marlowe is placed in the context of the six University Wits, where his reputation stands out as the most prominent, and the impact of his university education on his works is clarified. The essays selected for reprinting assess the most significant scholarship written about Marlowe, including biographical studies, challenges to familiar assumptions about the poet/playwright and his works, compositions on groupings of his works, on individual works, and on subjects particular to Marlowe. Unique in its perspective and in the collection of essays, this book will interest all students and scholars of Renaissance poetry, drama, and specialized cultural contexts.

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The Italian scholar and poet Francesco Petrarch (1304–1374) is best remembered today for vibrant and impassioned love poetry that helped to establish Italian as a literary language. Petrarch inspired later Renaissance writers, who produced an extraordinary body of work regarded today as perhaps the high-water mark of poetic productivity in the European West. These "Petrarchan" poets were self-consciously aware of themselves as poets—as craftsmen, revisers, and professionals. As William J. Kennedy shows in Petrarchism at Work, this commitment to professionalism and the mastery of poetic craft is essential to understanding Petrarch’s legacy. Petrarchism at Work contributes to recent scholarship that explores relationships between poetics and economic history in early-modern European literature. Kennedy traces the development of a Renaissance aesthetics from one based upon Platonic intuition and visionary furor to one grounded in Aristotelian craftsmanship and technique. Their polarities harbor economic consequences, the first privileging the poet’s divinely endowed talent, rewarded by the autocratic largess of patrons, the other emphasizing the poet’s acquired skill and hard work. Petrarch was the first to exploit the tensions between these polarities, followed by his poetic successors. These include Gaspara Stampa in the emergent salon society of Venice, Michelangelo Buonarroti in the "gift" economy of Medici Florence and papal Rome, Pierre de Ronsard and the poets of his Pléiade brigade in the fluctuant Valois court, and William Shakespeare and his contemporaries in the commercial world of Elizabethan and early Stuart London. As Kennedy shows, the poetic practices of revision and redaction by Petrarch and his successors exemplify the transition from a premodern economy of patronage to an early modern economy dominated by unstable market forces.

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''We that are true lovers run into strange capers.''Four centuries after its publication in the Folio, As You Like It''s capacity to entertain and instruct remains evergreen. This edition provides a friendly yet authoritative introduction to the play, upholding it as a crowning expression of the Elizabethan Renaissance while underscoring its appeal to twenty-first century readers as Shakespeare''s most intrepid exploration of gender, sexuality, and the environment. Its double-cross-dressed heroine dominates the plot (and their love interest Orlando) to conduct a masterclass in gender fluidity. The melancholic Jaques unmasks the fundamental theatricality of existence and questions humanity''s prerogative to displace and harm other species. Through the clown Touchstone, the comedy tests the possibility that we might laugh ourselves wise, especially when we learn to laugh at ourselves. In the Forest of Arden, we encounter Shakespeare''s most beguiling vision of the natural world as a real

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A legal document dated 1600, for a Star Chamber case titled Clifton versus Robinson, details how boys were abducted from London streets and forcibly held in order to train them as actors for the Blackfriars theatre. No adults were seen on-stage in this theatre, which was stocked solely by acting boys, resulting in a satirical and scurrilous method of play presentation. Were the boys specifically targeted for skills they may have possessed which would have been applicable to this type of play presentation? And, was this method of recruitment typical or atypical of Elizabethan theatre? Analysis of the background of the boy subjects of the legal case indicate that several had received grammar-school tuition and, as a result, would have possessed skills in oration and rhetoric. Indeed, a significant number of the grammar schools in London provided regular public disputations and theatrical performances which would have made these boys an attractive proposition for inclusion in a theatrical company. The styles of play-texts which the boys performed and their manner of presenting characters helps to assess why child acting companies were commercially viable and popular. Their portrayal of all roles in a performance; young and old, male and female, clearly demonstrated their versatility and skill in mimicry and the adoption of other personas. Therefore the taking of grammar-school boys for re-training as actors was not opportunistic; their abductions were planned. The theatre owners undertook this method of recruitment as they felt that they were immune from prosecution due to holding royal commissions which they used to recruit boys. However, the Clifton vs. Robinson case clearly demonstrates that a determined parent whose child had been taken could challenge this and demand reparation.

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'[A] comprehensive and important history of black Britain . . . Written with a wonderful clarity of style and with great force and passion.' – Kwasi Kwarteng, Sunday TimesIn this vital re-examination of a shared history, historian and broadcaster David Olusoga tells the rich and revealing story of the long relationship between the British Isles and the people of Africa and the Caribbean. This edition, fully revised and updated, features a new chapter encompassing the Windrush scandal and the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, events which put black British history at the centre of urgent national debate. Black and British is vivid confirmation that black history can no longer be kept separate and marginalised. It is woven into the cultural and economic histories of the nation and it belongs to us all.Drawing on new genealogical research, original records, and expert testimony, Black and British reaches back to Roman Britain, the medieval imagination, Elizabethan ‘blackamoors’ and the global slave-trading empire. It shows that the great industrial boom of the nineteenth century was built on American slavery, and that black Britons fought at Trafalgar and in the trenches of both World Wars. Black British history is woven into the cultural and economic histories of the nation. It is not a singular history, but one that belongs to us all.Unflinching, confronting taboos, and revealing hitherto unknown scandals, Olusoga describes how the lives of black and white Britons have been entwined for centuries.Winner of the 2017 PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize.Winner of the Longman History Today Trustees’ Award.A Waterstones History Book of the Year.Longlisted for the Orwell Prize.Shortlisted for the inaugural Jhalak Prize.

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In the mid-1930s, eminent locomotive engineer Sir Nigel Gresley produced plans for the A4 Class Pacifics, which were specially built to work a new high-speed express, the ‘Silver Jubilee’. From the start, the class caused a sensation and immediately secured the admiration of the general public. Gresley’s A4s captures these worldfamous locomotives throughout their life, with over 300 excellent colour and black and white images present in this collection, which is arguably the greatest ever assembled on the class. Photographs of every locomotive in the LNER and BR periods are included. Overa dozen A4s feature in a chapter dedicated to the 1946 renumbering, which lasted only two/three years, making pictures of them particularly rare. The A4s are shown at major centres on the East Coast Main Line, such as King’s Cross station, Peterborough, Grantham, Doncaster, York, Darlington, Newcastle and Edinburgh Waverley. Also, images taken during the twilight years in Scotland are included. The surviving engines are seen at several locations in the country – Aberdeen, Glasgow and Perth. A number of images are from the lineside at various points, or wayside stations and water troughs. Some classmembers have been photographed at sheds when being serviced, or under repair at workshops. Many of the famous trains worked by the A4s are presented, such as the ‘Silver Jubilee’, ‘Coronation’, ‘West Riding Limited’ and ‘Flying Scotsman’, then later the ‘Capitals Limited’, ‘Elizabethan’, ‘The Talisman’, etc. The class were often selected to head special trains and there are several examples of this in Gresley’s A4s. The pictures are accompanied by interesting and informative captions that provide details from the history of each locomotive, as well as the class.

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Unravel the history, themes, and language of Shakespeare's plays, poems, and sonnets with this beautifully illustrated guide to his life and works.Comedy and romance, history, and tragedy, Shakespeare's canon has it all. Some 400 years after they were written and first performed, his works still remain fresh and relevant today. Discover the work of the world's most celebrated playwright with:- A clear and accessible format- Act-by-act plot summaries of all of his 39 plays with lists of characters- Guidance on how to read and interpret his great sonnets and narrative poems- Plays ordered by time and genre, helping readers to trace the development of Shakespeare's topics, themes, and artistry- Sidebars that clarify the mythological, geographical, and historical context of each play and decode its language, dramatic action, and themesShakespeare fans will revel in the marvellous depiction of the Stratford-upon-Avon-born Bard himself! His drama book allows you to dive into famous works like Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and A Midsummer Nights Dreams and explore Shakespeare's sources and inspirations for each! Themes, plots, characters, and language are brought to life with act-by-act plot summaries, resumes of main characters, and in-depth analysis of Shakespeare's use of the English language. Shakespeare: His Life and Works is a wonderful exploration of plays, poems, and sonnets in the context of his life and the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre further enriching your experience on, on the page, stage, or screen. It's the perfect gift for existing fans of Shakespeare, and anyone looking to find out more about the work of the world's most celebrated playwright.

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Early espionage organisations like Walsingham's Elizabethan spy network were private enterprises, tasked with keeping the Tudor Queen and her government safe. Formal use of spies and counter spies only really began in the years after 1909, when the official British secret service was founded. Britain became the first major proponent of secret information gathering and other nations quickly followed. The outbreak of war in 1914 saw a sudden and dramatic increase in the use of spies as the military quickly began to realise the value of covert intelligence. Spying 'came of age' during the war on the Western Front and that value only increased in the run up to the Second World War, when the threat of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany began to make themselves felt. The Cold War years, with the use of moles, defectors and double agents on both sides of the Iron Curtain saw the art of spying assume record proportions. The passing on of atom secrets, the truth about Russian missiles on Cuba, it was the age of the double agent, the activities of whom managed to keep away the looming threat of nuclear war. _A Hundred Years of Spying_ takes the reader through the murky world of espionage as it develops over the course of the twentieth century, where the lines of truth and reality blur, and where many real-life spies have always been accompanied, maybe even proceeded, by a plethora of spy literature. This book will look at the use of and development of spying as an accepted military practice. It will focus on individuals from Belgians like Gabrielle Petite to the infamous Mata Hari, from people like Reilly Ace of Spies to the British traitors such as Philby, Burgess and McClean. The activities of American atom spies like the Rosenbergs will also be covered as will Russian double agent Oleg Penkovsky and many others.

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A new account of medieval and Renaissance clown traditions reveals the true extent of their cultural influence. From the late-medieval period through to the seventeenth century, English theatrical clowns carried a weighty cultural significance, only to have it stripped from them, sometimes violently, by the close of the Renaissance when the famed "license" of fooling was effectively revoked. This groundbreaking survey of clown traditions in the period looks both at their history, and reveals their hidden cultural contexts and legacies; it has far-reaching implications not only for our general understanding of English clown types, but also their considerable role in defining social, religious and racial boundaries. It begins with an exploration of previously un-noted early representations of blackness in medieval psalters, cycle plays, and Tudor interludes, arguing that they are emblematic of folly and ignorance rather than of evil. Subsequent chapters show how protestants at Cambridge and at court, during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward, patronised a clownish, iconoclastic Lord of Misrule; look at the Elizabethan puritan stage clown; and move on to a provocative reconsideration of the Fool in King Lear, drawing completely fresh conclusions. Finally, the epilogue points to the satirical clowning which took place surreptitiously in the Interregnum, and the (sometimes violent) end of "licensed" folly. Professor ROBERT HORNBACK teaches in the Departments of Literature and Theatre at Oglethorpe University.

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A panoramic history of Puritanism in England, Scotland, and New EnglandThis book is a sweeping transatlantic history of Puritanism from its emergence out of the religious tumult of Elizabethan England to its founding role in the story of America. Shedding critical light on the diverse forms of Puritan belief and practice in England, Scotland, and New England, David Hall describes the movement’s deeply ambiguous triumph under Oliver Cromwell, its political demise with the Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, and its perilous migration across the Atlantic to establish a “perfect reformation” in the New World. This monumental book traces how Puritanism was a catalyst for profound cultural changes in the early modern Atlantic world, opening the door for other dissenter groups such as the Baptists and the Quakers, and leaving its enduring mark on religion in America.

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