This book provides a detailed study of the Children of the Queen's Revels, the most enduring and influential of the Jacobean children's companies. Between 1603 and 1613 the Queen's Revels staged plays by Francis Beaumont, George Chapman, John Fletcher, Ben Jonson, John Marston and Thomas Middleton, all of whom were at their most innovative when writing for this company. Combining theatre history and critical analysis, this study provides a history of the Children of the Queen's Revels, and an account of their repertory. It examines the 'biography' of the company - demonstrating the involvement in dramatic production of dramatists, shareholders, patrons, audiences and actors alike, and reappraising issues such as management, performance style and audience composition - before exploring their groundbreaking practices in comedy, tragicomedy and tragedy. The book also includes five documentary appendices detailing the plays, people and performances of the Queen's Revels Company.

Prior to the 1666 fire of London, St Paul's Cathedral was an important central site for religious, commercial, and social life in London. The literature of the period - both fictional and historical - reveals a great interest in the space, and show it to be complex and contested, with multiple functions and uses beyond its status as a church. St Paul's Cathedral Precinct in Early Modern Literature and Culture: Spatial Practices animates the cathedral space by focusing on the every day functions of the building, deepening and sometimes complicating previous works on St Paul's. St Paul's Cathedral Precinct in Early Modern Literature and Culture is a study of London's cathedral, its immediate surroundings, and its everyday users in early modern literary and historical documents and images, with special emphasis on the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It discusses representations of several of the seemingly discrete spaces of the precinct to reveal how these spaces overlap with and inform one another spatially, and argues that specific locations should be seen as mutually constitutive and in a dynamic and ever-evolving state. The varied uses of the precinct, including the embodied spatial practices of early modern Londoners and visitors, are examined, including the walkers in the nave, sermon-goers, those who shopped for books, the residents of the precinct, the choristers, and those who were devoted to church repairs and renovations.

This authoritative new edition of "Epicene" locates it precisely in the world of Jacobean wit, court, commerce sexual ambiguity and theatrical innovation which are its own subject-matter.