Renaissance and early 17th Century Drama

  • King Lear - Ed. Best & Joubin

    King Lear – Ed. Best & Joubin

    King Lear is a play for our times. The central characters experience intense suffering in a hostile and unpredictable world. They face domestic cruelty, political…

  • The Knight of the Burning Pestle

    The Knight of the Burning Pestle

    This volume presents a fresh new edition of the most important play by one of Shakespeare’s most creative contemporaries. Francis Beaumont’s The Knight of the…

  • Selimus

    Selimus

    This Broadview Edition of Robert Greene’s Selimus is the first single-volume, modernized edition of this underrated dramatic gem in over a century. First published in…

  • The Witch of Edmonton

    The Witch of Edmonton

    At the center of this remarkable 1621 play is the story of Elizabeth Sawyer, the titular “Witch of Edmonton,” a woman who had in fact…

  • The Broadview Anthology of Tudor Drama

    The Broadview Anthology of Tudor Drama

    English drama between the late fifteenth and the late sixteenth centuries is as diverse as it is engaging; this anthology brings together eighteen of the…

  • The Tempest

    The Tempest

    The world that William Shakespeare creates in The Tempest has many features that make it recognizably like our own. There are bad, self-seeking people; brothers…

  • The Alchemist

    The Alchemist

    The Alchemist has long been admired as one of Ben Jonson’s best dramas; its satiric cleverness and metatheatricality have delighted audiences from its first performance…

  • The Roaring Girl

    The Roaring Girl

    The titular “Roaring Girl” of Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker’s comedy is Moll Cutpurse, a fictionalized version of Mary Frith, who attained legendary status in…

  • Hamlet

    Hamlet

    In the introduction to this new edition, David Bevington explores some key dilemmas and puzzles in this most famous of Shakespeare’s tragedies. What is the…

  • Othello

    Othello

    Although other Shakespeare plays offer higher body counts, more gore, and more plentiful scenes of heartbreak, Othello packs an unusually powerful affective punch, stunning us…

  • The Spanish Tragedy

    The Spanish Tragedy

    The Spanish Tragedy became one of the most successful plays on the Elizabethan English stage and laid the foundation of the revenge tragedy, a genre…

  • The Merchant of Venice

    The Merchant of Venice

    The Merchant of Venice is best known for its complex and ambiguous portrait of the Jewish moneylender Shylock—and of European anti-Semitism. Fascinating in its engagement…

  • The Winter's Tale

    The Winter’s Tale

    Neither comedy nor tragedy, The Winter’s Tale contains elements of each genre, and defies easy classification. It experiments, like many of Shakespeare’s late plays, with…

  • Twelfth Night - ISE - Ed. Carnegie & Houlahan

    Twelfth Night – ISE – Ed. Carnegie & Houlahan

    Twelfth Night has seldom been off the stage since Shakespeare’s day. It has been performed for its romantic high comedy and its boisterous low comedy;…

  • Henry V

    Henry V

    Upon opening their expensive new book in 1623, buyers of the folio collection of William Shakespeare’s plays were promised The Life of Henry the Fift.…

  • Tamburlaine the Great

    Tamburlaine the Great

    Tamburlaine the Great, Part One and Part Two are the first plays that Christopher Marlowe wrote for London’s then new freestanding, open-air public playhouses. They…

  • Henry IV - Part One

    Henry IV – Part One

    Henry IV, Part One has been one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays since it was first produced, and was reprinted several times during the playwright’s…

  • Julius Caesar

    Julius Caesar

    Julius Caesar is a key link between Shakespeare’s histories and his tragedies. Unlike the Caesar drawn by Plutarch in a source text, Shakespeare’s Caesar is…

  • As You Like It

    As You Like It

    Both a witty satire of literary cliché and a tender meditation on the varieties of love, As You Like It continues to be one of…

  • The Jew of Malta

    The Jew of Malta

    First performed by Shakespeare’s rivals in the 1590s, Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta was a trend-setting, innovative play whose black comedy and final tragic…

  • Twelfth Night - Ed. Swain

    Twelfth Night – Ed. Swain

    This volume includes the text of Twelfth Night as prepared and annotated by David Swain for The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, and is accompanied…

  • Edward the Second

    Edward the Second

    Depicting with shocking openness the sexual and political violence of its central characters’ fates, Edward the Second broke new dramatic ground in English theatre. The…

  • King Lear

    King Lear

    The text of the play included here, prepared by Craig Walker for The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, has been acclaimed for its outstanding introductory…

  • Doctor Faustus - Second Edition

    Doctor Faustus – Second Edition

    Doctor Faustus is a classic; its imaginative boldness and vertiginous ironies have fascinated readers and playgoers alike. But the fact that this play exists in…