Week-By-Week Readings

Week-by-Week Readings

The coursebook will beEnglish Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology, edsBevington, Engle, Maus and Rasmussen (New York and London, 2002). All the set plays are in this volume.

Each week there will be short additional readings to help you understand the play in its context.It is my expectation that you will come to class having read at least one, and usually two of them. Consistent failure to do so will prejudice your ability to answer the assessment questions and will incur my (just) wrath.

WUL: ebook in or journal available through Warwick University Library

CoEx: Course extract on the EN353 course extracts page The library will scan these two items before the start of term.

Week 1, Robert Green,Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay(c.1589)

Deborah Willis, ‘Magic and Witchcraft’ in Kinney (ed.), Companion (WUL)

Alan C. Dessen, ‘RobertGreene and the Theatrical Vocabulary of the Early 1590s’ in Writing Robert Greene: Essays on England's First Notorious Professional Writer, ed. Kirk Melnikoff and Edward Gieskes (Ashgate, 2008), 25-38. (CoEx)

Week 2, Anon.,Arden of Feversham(1592)

Martin Ingram, ‘Family and Household’ in Kinney (WUL)

Lena Orlin Cowan, ‘Domestic Tragedy: Private Life on the Public Stage’ in Kinney (WUL)

Week 3, Thomas Dekker,The Shoemaker's Holiday(1599)

John A Twyning, ‘City Comedy’ in Kinney (WUL)

Alison A. Chapman, ‘Whose Saint Crispin's Day Is It?: Shoemaking, Holiday Making, and the Politics of Memory in Early Modern England’, Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 4, Part 2 (Winter, 2001), pp. 1467-1494. Connect to JSTOR via Warwick University Library.

Week 4, John Marston,The Malcontent(c. 1603)

Michael Shapiro, ‘Boys Companies and Private Theatres’ in Kinney (WUL)

Mark Thornton Burnett, ‘Staging the Malcontent in Early Modern England’ in Kinney (WUL)

Week 5, Thomas Middleton,TheRevenger's Tragedy(1606);

Eugene D. Hill, ‘Revenge Tragedy’ in Kinney (WUL)

John Kerrigan, ‘On Aristotle and Revenge Tragedy’ in Revenge Tragedy: From Aeschylus to Armageddon (Oxford, 1996), ebook at (WUL). You may want to read more widely in this book which is rightly famous for its learning and perspicacity.

Also T. S. Eliot on ‘Thomas Middleton’ (who probably wrote RT) and ‘Cyril Tourneur’ (who was thought to have written RT) in Selected Essays (Faber, 1932, constantly reprinted)

Week 6, Reading Week

Week 7, Ben Jonson,Volpone(1606)

D. A. Scheve, ‘Jonson’s Volpone and Traditional Fox Lore’, Review of English Studies (1950), pp. 242-4 via (WUL)

Edward Topsell, A History of Four-Footed Beasts (London, 1607), via Early English Books Online (EEBO). Entry for ‘fox’. You’ll have to find this yourself – part of the task is negotiating EEBO and finding the right section of the book (look on the EN228 website if you are stuck – there is an EEBO tutorial there).

W. David Kay, ‘Ben Jonson’ in Kinney (WUL).

Week 8, Francis Beaumont,The Knight of the Burning Pestle(1607);

Lee Bliss, ‘Beaumont and Fletcher’ in Kinney (WUL)

David M. Bergeron, ‘Paratexts in Francis Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning Pestle’, Studies in Philology,106:4 (Fall 2009), pp. 456-467. Connect via WUL

Week 9, John Webster,The Duchess of Malfi(1613),

Lisa Jardine, "'I am Duchess of Malfi Still': Wealth, Inheritance and the Spectre of Strong Women," in Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare(Brighton: The Harvester Press, 1983), pp. 68-102. (CoEx)

Elli Abraham Shellist, ‘John Webster’ in Kinney (WUL).

Week 10, Philip Massinger,A New Way to Pay Old Debts(c. 1625)

Michael Neill, "Massinger's Patriarchy: The Social Vision of A New Way to Pay Old Debts," Renaissance Drama, 10 (1979), 185-213. (CoEx)