Shakespeare and George Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie This work explores the mysterious life of George Puttenham (1529-91), one of the most enigmatic characters of Queen Elizabeth I's reign, who was reputed to have authored the acclaimed anonymously written Arte of English Poesie in 1589, a book closely related to the Shakespeare plays. Because of his numerous enemies, especially among the Puritan church leaders, Puttenham was forced to conceal his literary activities, however the recently found archive evidence suggests that he could be the 'missing man' behind some of the most important anonymous plays that were circulating between 1580-91, many of which are thought to be possible early versions of Shakespeare's work, such as Ur-Hamlet, written ca. 1587-88. Archive documents indicate Puttenham had an important secret role to play as a writer of Protestant propaganda between 1578-91. Included in this work are Puttenham's Partheniades poems (ca. 1581), his Justification document for the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (1587), the attributed Civil and Uncivil Life (ca. 1577), retitled as the English Courtier and the Country Gentleman, and more than 70 examples of unpublished archive documents. These comprise three book lists of nearly 250 books or authors mentioned, numerous letters and legal documents indicating his close association with Queen Elizabeth, and a 30 page transcription from an unidentified manuscript of a story, which has similarities in plot with Shakespeare's Winter's Tale.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

The first modernized and fully annotated edition of Puttenham's 1589 text.