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'I have success, money, women. I've been lionised by the public and the media. The world is at my feet. I've spread my wings and here I am, soaring above everything and everyone. But in reality, the descent has already begun.' Thomas Dekker was set to become one of pro cycling’s superstars. But before long, he found himself sucked in by the lure of hedonistic highs and troubled by the intense pressure to perform. In The Descent, Dekker tells his story of hotel room blood bags, shady rendezvous with drug dealers and late-night partying at the Tour de France. This is Dekker’s journey from youthful idealism to a sordid path of excess and doping that lays bare cycling’s darkest secrets like never before.
The Elizabethan dramatist Thomas Dekker was a versatile and prolific writer, whose career spanned several decades and brought him into contact with many of the period's most famous dramatists. Of the surviving plays that are entirely Dekker’s work, the best-known are ‘The Shoemakers Holiday’ (1600) and ‘The Honest Whore, Part 2’ (1630), which are typical of his work in their use of the moralistic tone of traditional drama. His ear for colloquial speech served him well in his vibrant portrayals of daily life in London and his works are characterised for their boisterousness nature and an inimitable mixture of realistic detail and romanticised plot. Dekker was also a writer of pamphl...
First published in 1957. This edition re-issues the second edition of 1965. Recognized as one of the leading books in its field, The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare presents the most comprehensive account available of the English historical drama from its beginning to the closing of the theatres in 1642 and relates this development to Renaissance historiography and Elizabethan political theory.
The Figure of the Crowd in Early Modern London examines the cultural phenomenon of the urban crowd in the context of early modern London's population crisis. The book explores the crowd's double function as a symbol of the city's growth and as the necessary context for the public performance of urban culture. Its central argument is that the figure of the crowd acts as a supplement to the symbolic space of the city, at once providing a tangible referent for urban meaning and threatening the legibility of that meaning through its motive force and uncontrollable energy.
Featuring entries composed by leading international scholars, The Encyclopedia of English Renaissance Literature presents comprehensive coverage of all aspects of English literature produced from the early 16th to the mid 17th centuries. Comprises over 400 entries ranging from 1000 to 5000 words written by leading international scholars Arranged in A-Z format across three fully indexed and cross-referenced volumes Provides coverage of canonical authors and their works, as well as a variety of previously under-considered areas, including women writers, broadside ballads, commonplace books, and other popular literary forms Biographical material on authors is presented in the context of cutting-edge critical discussion of literary works. Represents the most comprehensive resource available for those working in English Renaissance literary studies Also available online as part of the Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Literature, providing 24/7 access and powerful searching, browsing and cross-referencing capabilities
The specter of Spain rarely figures in our discussions of the drama that is often regarded as the crowning achievement of the English literary Renaissance. Yet dramatists such as Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare are exactly contemporary with England's protracted conflict with the Spanish Empire, a traditional ally turned archetypical adversary. Were these playwrights really so mute with respect to their nation's Spanish troubles? Or have we failed—for reasons cultural and institutional—to hear the Hispanophobic crosstalk that permeated the drama no less than England's other public discourses? Imagining an early modern public sphere in which dramatists cross pens w...
This is the fourth and final volume of the Cambridge edition of the works of John Webster. It contains four plays Webster wrote in collaboration, one - Sir Thomas Wyatt, a historical tragedy based around Lady Jane Grey - as part of a team of five led by Thomas Dekker, two - Westward Ho and Northward Ho, city comedies that prompted Chapman, Jonson, and Marston's Eastward Ho - with Thomas Dekker alone, and one - The Fair Maid of the Inn, an Italianate tragicomedy of which Webster wrote the largest share - with John Fletcher, Philip Massinger and John Ford. With the inclusion of these four plays, this Cambridge edition becomes the first complete works of John Webster. The edition preserves the original spelling of the plays, poetry, and prose, and incorporates the most recent editorial scholarship, including information on Webster's share in the collaborative plays, and new critical methods, textual theory, and theatrical analysis.