The important influence of the Tudor 'interlude' on later Elizabethan drama is now widely recognized and the inherent theatrical values of these short plays of the era which preceded the opening of permanent theatres have become increasingly apparent through modern productions and study. Largely written for performance by travelling players in a variety of situations, their dramatic technique and methods of staging provide valuable clues for an understanding of Shakespearean theatre. The plays given here represent the interlude in its popular and courtly forms. All are newly edited from the earliest originals and the volume includes an introduction and full explanatory notes.

The Children’s Troupes and the Transformation of English Theater 1509–1608 uncovers the role of the children’s companies in transforming perceptions of authorship and publishing, performance, playing spaces, patronage, actor training, and gender politics in the sixteenth century. Jeanne McCarthy challenges entrenched narratives about popular playing in an era of revolutionary changes, revealing the importance of the children’s company tradition’s connection with many early plays, as well as to the spread of literacy, classicism, and literate ideals of drama, plot, textual fidelity, characterization, and acting in a still largely oral popular culture. By addressing developments from the hyper-literate school tradition, and integrating discussion of the children’s troupes into the critical conversation around popular playing practices, McCarthy offers a nuanced account of the play-centered, literary performance tradition that came to define professional theater in this period. Highlighting the significant role of the children’s company tradition in sixteenth-century performance culture, this volume offers a bold new narrative of the emergence of the London theater.

Darryll Grantley has created a comprehensive guide to the interlude: the extant non-cycle drama in English from the late fourteenth century up to the period in which the London commercial theatre began. As precursors of seventeenth-century drama, not only do these interludes shed important light on the technical and literary development of Shakespearean theatre, but many are also works of considerable theatrical or cultural interest in themselves. This accessible reference guide provides an entry for each of the extant interludes and fragments (c.100) typically containing an account of early editions or manuscripts; authorship and sources; modern editions; plot summary and dramatis personae; list of social issues present in the plays; verbal and dramaturgical features; songs and music; allusions and place names; stage directions and comments on staging; and modern productions, among other valuable and informative details. There are full bibliographies, indexes of characters and songs, and appendices.

Sensitive study of the 15/16 century interlude, focussing on one of its major concerns, the depiction of male aristocracy and the development to maturity. The commercial theatre of the late sixteenth century is often credited with introducing its audiences to new modes of thought about the self, society and the nation, making them conscious that the self is performed, as an actor performs a role. Yet the earlier interlude drama, originally performed in households and other institutions of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, indicates that the late medieval period was fully aware of the theatricalityof identity. This book argues that ideas of performance inform the concepts of aristocratic masculinity developed in the plays Nature, Fulgens and Lucres, The Worlde and the Chylde, The Interlude of Youth and Calisto and Melebea. It examines how the depiction of young male aristocrats in these texts is shaped by ideas of male youth constituted in the middle ages, and shows them as failing or succeeding to perform anadult noble masculinity in the aristocratic body and in aristocratic household. The book also suggests ways in which the plays offer discreet praise and censure of the manner in which their noble patrons performed as aristocrats.Throughout, it brings out the subtle qualities of the interludes, which, the author shows, have been unjustly neglected. Dr FIONA S. DUNLOP is Research Associate of the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York