The Works of Richard Edwards: Politics, Poetry and Performance in Sixteenth Century England

The heart of this book is its fully annotated, critical editions of the surviving work of Richard Edwards, one of the most influential poets and dramatists writing in England before Shakespeare. Ros King's extensive introduction, identifying the holes in the documentary evidence that might accommodate this important but now little known writer, rewrites the history of pre-Shakespearean drama, illustrates new approaches to sixteenth-century prosody and to the modernisation of dramatic poetry, and re-evaluates the public role of theatre and poetry during a particularly turbulent period in English history. The book includes Edwards' play, Damon and Pythias, his poems (some never before printed and some newly ascribed), together with a number of original musical settings. There is also a detailed description of the staging of his spectacular lost play, Palamon and Arcyte, performed before Queen Elizabeth I at Oxford, with eye-witness accounts of her reactions. While it will be essential reading for specialist scholars, it will also be of much wider interest. The introduction is highly accessible which makes it an appropriate text-book for students in a field where few textbooks are available. It will appeal to the current appetite among the reading public for biography, while the play, poems and songs are themselves very appealing.

Author: Paul Edmondson
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 05/01/2009
Pages: 288
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.74lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9780719080661

About the Author

Ros King is Professor of English at The University of Southampton