Introduction

The plays of Shakespeare's contemporaries are increasingly popular thanks to a spate of recent stage and screen productions and to courses that set Shakespeare's plays in context. This Reader's Guide introduces students to the criticism and debates that are specific to the drama of playwrights such as Jonson, Middleton, Dekker and Webster. Pascale Aebischer explores recent critical developments in key areas including:

• how the plays were staged and printed
• innovative editions of plays
• how the plays represent and contest the dominant ideologies of the Jacobean period
• dramatic genres
• the representation of the human body and of social, gender and race relations
• modern productions on stage and screen.

Featuring suggestions for further research and reading, and a filmography of commercially available film versions of non-Shakespearean drama, this is an invaluable resource for anyone with an interest in the diverse plays of the Jacobean age.