Browse Hierarchy ESH280: Renaissance Drama

Renaissance Drama offers an in-depth look at arguably the most exciting and innovative period of English drama: from late medieval religious drama, through the emergence of commercial theatre in the 1570s, the closure of theatres under the Long Parliament, to Restoration drama. It will investigate the preoccupations of early modern dramatists, as they wrote about their city and country, native citizens and exotic strangers, and developed the language and technical resources of the theatre. We will examine London theatre, through plays about the capital leading into exploring how the theatre imagined itself and complicated the act of playing through meta-theatricality. We will also explore two themes that appeared repeatedly in Renaissance plays - early modern attitudes to strangers and others, and concepts of justice - in order to understand the social conditions, attitudes and laws that shaped English lives in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.