Robert Greene

"This study examines the lives and works of three Elizabethan authors-John Lyly, Philip Sidney, and Robert Greene-in order to trace an important transition in authorship at an historical moment in England. In sixteenth-century England ""poetry"" (in Sidney's"

With the expansion of the publishing industry between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, reading for pleasure became possible for an increasing number of people, not just the wealthy and educated. The growth of the book trade produced, alongside elite literature, a parallel popular literature. Lori Humphrey Newcomb examines the proliferation of romances in early modern England, as well as their vilification by elite writers. Using as her case study Robert Greene's Pandosto (1585), an Elizabethan prose romance that inspired Shakespeare's late play, The Winter's Tale, she shows that the two forms of literature influenced each other profoundly. Because Shakespeare's works are considered timeless literary achievements, critics have distanced his plays from his romantic sources -- a separation that until now has gone unquestioned. Newcomb undermines this assumption, providing a fascinating account of an early bestseller's incarnations over 250 years of literary history.

Elizabethan fiction has profited from the newer modes of critical inquiry. Such texts as George Gascoigne's The Adventures of Master F. J., John Lyly's Euphues, George Pettie's A Petite Palace of Pettie his Pleasure, or Nicholas Breton's The Miseries of Mavilla have often been seen as the work of "hack" writers, inelegant aberrations that demonstrated little about the culture of 16th-century Britain or the development of English fiction. This collection of original essays draws on a wide range of critical and theoretical approaches, especially those influenced by various elements of feminism, Marxism, and cultural studies. They illuminate the richness of canonical examples of Elizabethan fiction (Sidney's Arcadia) and less widely read works (Henry Chettle's Piers Plainess).

English drama at the beginning of the sixteenth century was allegorical, didactic and moralistic; but by the end of the century theater was censured as emotional and even immoral. How could such a change occur? Kent Cartwright suggests that some theories of early Renaissance theater need to be reconsidered. He proposes that humanist drama of the sixteenth century is theatrically exciting and socially significant, and he attempts to integrate popular and humanist values rather than setting them against each other.

Shakespeare is usually set apart from his contemporaries, in kind no less than quality. This book, the long-awaited final volume in the Oxford History of English Literature, sees Elizabethan drama as drawn together by a shared need to deal with contradictory pressures from heterogeneous audiences, censorious authorities, profit driven managers, and authors looking for classic status and social esteem. Hunter follows the compromises and contradictions of the Elizabethan repertory, examining how Shakespeare and his fellow dramatists were able to move easily from vulgar realism to poetic transcendence.

The individuals and events of the Elizabethan era continue to be popular topics for contemporary literature and film, and Elizabethan drama, poetry, and music are studied and enjoyed everywhere by students, scholars, and the general public. The Historical Dictionary of the Elizabethan World provides its users with clear definitions and descriptions of people, events, institutions, ideas, and terminology relating in some significant way to the Elizabethan period. The first dictionary of history to focus exclusively on the reign of Elizabeth I, this volume is also the first to take abroad trans-Atlantic approach to the period by including relevant individuals and terms from Irish, Scottish, Welsh, American, and Western European history.