This in-depth study of the important but neglected writer Anthony Munday fills a long-standing gap in our knowledge and understanding of London and its culture in the early modern period. It will be of interest to historians, literary scholars and cultural geographers.

"This collection of original essays examines the publication and reception history of sixteenth-century Iberian books of chivalry in English translation and explores the impact of that literary corpus on Elizabethan culture as well as its connections with other contemporary genres such as native English fiction, chronicle, and epistolary writing. The essays focus mainly on Anthony Munday's work as the leading translator as well as the two main Spanish sixteenth-century cycles-Le., Amadis and Palmerin-from a variety of critical approaches, including cultural studies, book history and reception, material history, translation, post-colonial criticism, and early modern Qender studies."--

An international journal committed to the publication of essays and reviews relevant to drama and theatre history to 1642. This issue includes nine new articles and reviews of three books.

The Dutch were culturally ubiquitous in England during the early modern period and constituted London's largest alien population in the second half of the sixteenth century. While many sought temporary refuge from Spanish oppression in the Low Countries, others became part of a Dutch diaspora, developing their commercial, spiritual, and domestic lives in England. The category "Dutch" catalyzed questions about English self-definition that were engendered less by large-scale cultural distinctions than by uncanny similarities. Doppelgänger Dilemmas uncovers the ways England's real and imagined proximities with the Dutch played a crucial role in the making of English ethnicity. Marjorie Rubright explores the tensions of Anglo-Dutch relations that emerged in the form of puns, double entendres, cognates, homophones, copies, palimpsests, doppelgängers, and other doublings of character and kind. Through readings of London's stage plays and civic pageantry, English and Continental polyglot and bilingual dictionaries and grammars, and travel accounts of Anglo-Dutch rivalries and friendships in the Spice Islands, Rubright reveals how representations of Dutchness played a vital role in shaping Englishness in virtually every aspect of early modern social life. Her innovative book sheds new light on the literary and historical forces of similitude in an era that was so often preoccupied with ethnic and cultural difference.

This study punctures the stereotyped portrayals of Marlowe, first created by his rival Robert Greene, and, yet, which still colour our view. In doing so, Ide reveals the social and cultural discourses out of which such myths emerged.We know next to nothing about the life of the playwright Christopher Marlowe (b.1564 - d. 1593). Few documents survive other than his birth record in the parish register, a handful of legal cases in court records, Privy Council mandates and reports to the Council, the coroner's examination of his death, and a few hearsay accounts of his atheism. With such a limited collection of biographical documents available, it is impossible to retrieve from history a complete sense of Marlowe. However, this does not mean that biography cannot play a significant role in Marlowe studies. By observing the details of the specific places and communities to which Marlowe belonged, this book highlights the collective experiences and concerns of the social groups and communities with which we know he was personally and financially involved. Specifically, Localizing Christopher Marlowe reveals the political and cultural dynamics in the community of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, into which Marlowe was deeply integrated and through which he became affiliated with the circle of Sir Francis Walsingham, mapping these influences in both his life and works.e was personally and financially involved. Specifically, Localizing Christopher Marlowe reveals the political and cultural dynamics in the community of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, into which Marlowe was deeply integrated and through which he became affiliated with the circle of Sir Francis Walsingham, mapping these influences in both his life and works.e was personally and financially involved. Specifically, Localizing Christopher Marlowe reveals the political and cultural dynamics in the community of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, into which Marlowe was deeply integrated and through which he became affiliated with the circle of Sir Francis Walsingham, mapping these influences in both his life and works.e was personally and financially involved. Specifically, Localizing Christopher Marlowe reveals the political and cultural dynamics in the community of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, into which Marlowe was deeply integrated and through which he became affiliated with the circle of Sir Francis Walsingham, mapping these influences in both his life and works.

Sabrina Feldman manages the Planetary Science Instrument Development Office at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Born and raised in Riverside, California, she attended college and graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley, where she enjoyed the wonderful performances of the Berkeley Shakespeare Company, studied Shakespeare's works for a semester with Professor Stephen Booth, and received a Ph.D. in experimental physics in 1996. She has worked on many different instrument development projects for NASA, and is the former deputy director of JPL's Center for Life Detection. Her scientific training, combined with a lifelong love of literature and all things Shakespearean, gives her a unique perspective on the Shakespeare authorship mystery. Dr. Feldman lives in Pasadena, California with her husband and two children. This is her first book. If William Shakespeare wrote the Bard's works... Who wrote the Shakespeare Apocrypha? During his lifetime and for many years afterwards, William Shakespeare was credited with writing not only the Bard's canonical works, but also a series of 'apocryphal' Shakespeare plays. Stylistic threads linking these lesser works suggest they shared a common author or co-author who wrote in a coarse, breezy style, and created very funny clown scenes. He was also prone to pilfering lines from other dramatists, consistent with Robert Greene's 1592 attack on William Shakespeare as an "upstart crow." The anomalous existence of two bodies of work exhibiting distinct poetic voices printed under one man's name suggests a fascinating possibility. Could William Shakespeare have written the apocryphal plays while serving as a front man for the 'poet in purple robes, ' a hidden court poet who was much admired by a literary coterie in the 1590s? And could the 'poet in purple robes' have been the great poet and statesman Thomas Sackville (1536-1608), a previously overlooked authorship candidate who is an excellent fit to the Shakespearean glass slipper? Both of these scenarios are well supported by literary and historical records, many of which have not been previously considered in the context of the Shakespeare authorship debate.

Exploring Shakespeare's intellectual interest in placing both characters and audiences in a state of uncertainty, mystery, and doubt, this book interrogates the use of paradox in Shakespeare's plays and in performance. By adopting this discourse-one in which opposites can co-exist and perspectives can be altered, and one that asks accepted opinions, beliefs, and truths to be reconsidered-Shakespeare used paradox to question love, gender, knowledge, and truth from multiple perspectives. Committed to situating literature within the larger culture, Peter Platt begins by examining the Renaissance culture of paradox in both the classical and Christian traditions. He then looks at selected plays in terms of paradox, including the geographical site of Venice in Othello and The Merchant of Venice, and equity law in The Comedy of Errors, Merchant, and Measure for Measure. Platt also considers the paradoxes of theater and live performance that were central to Shakespearean drama, such as the duality of the player, the boy-actor and gender, and the play/audience relationship in the Henriad, Hamlet, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Antony and Cleopatra, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. In showing that Shakespeare's plays create and are created by a culture of paradox, Platt offers an exciting and innovative investigation of Shakespeare's cognitive and affective power over his audience.