This collection tells the life stories of the people whom we know Shakespeare encountered, shedding new light on Shakespeare's life and times.

Originally published in 1592, this early modern play tells the story of a young maid's dream of true love and the trials and tribulations that she and her lover must face to achieve it. Written in blank verse and featuring a cast of memorable characters, this play is a delightful and entertaining work of literature that will enchant readers of all ages. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

English Literary Afterlives traces life narratives of early modern authors created for them after their deaths by readers or publishers, who retrospectively tried to make sense of the author’s life and works. In a series of case-studies of the reception history of major poets – Sidney, Spenser, Donne, Herbert, as well as Robert Greene, the first ‘celebrity author’ – within a generation of their deaths, it shows how those authors were posthumously fashioned and refashioned. It argues that during the early modern period there is a gradual movement towards biographical readings that attempt to find the author in the works, which in turn led to the emergence of written lives that consider poets not in terms of their ‘public’ lives but in terms of their poetic activity, i.e. the beginnings of literary biography. Will be of interest to students and scholars of several canonical early modern authors.

'One of the most productive, imaginative and risk-taking of writers... It is a clever, sexually explicit, fast-moving, full blooded yarn' Irish Times A Dead Man in Deptford re-imagines the riotous life and suspicious death of Christopher Marlowe. Poet, lover and spy, Marlowe must negotiate the pressures placed upon him by the theatre, Queen and country. Burgess brings this dazzling figure to life and pungently evokes Elizabethan England. 'A fast, funny, flawless recreation' Hilary Mantel See also: Earthly Powers

The first essay collection dedicated to the work of Shakespeare's contemporary Robert Greene, Writing Robert Greene considers Greene's writings in the contexts of his extensive engagement with the popular print market and his work as a professional dramatist for the London-based theatre companies. The volume includes three valuable appendices (presenting apocrypha; edition information; and a list of Greene's works by year published) and an annotated bibliography of recent scholarship.