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The Misfortunes of Arthur, written by Thomas Hughes is one of the earliest printed plays from the English Renaissance and, as such, deserves its place of interest in dramaturgical studies for its historical significance. It offers a detailed literary evocation of Elizabethan anti-imperial thinking and a genuine desire to debate controversial questions. The play takes a sceptical view of Arthur and provides evidence of a political point of view that must have had a significant number of supporters in 1588 when it was performed for Elizabeth I on the eve of the Spanish Armada. It is also not difficult to find themes in The Misfortunes of Arthur which would find expression again in the later Re...
Douglas Bruster's provocative study of English Renaissance drama explores its links with Elizabethan and Jacobean economy and society, looking at the status of playwrights such as Shakespeare and the establishment of commercial theatres. He identifies in the drama a materialist vision which has its origins in the climate of uncertainty engendered by the rapidly expanding economy of London. His examples range from the economic importance of cuckoldry to the role of stage props as commodities, and the commercial significance of the Troy story in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, and he offers new ways of reading English Renaissance drama, by returning the theatre and the plays performed there, to its basis in the material world.