Plotting Early Modern London

Looking at a broad range of plays written between the 1590s and the 1630s - satirical master-pieces like Eastward Ho, A Trick to Catch the Old One, The Dutch Courtesan and The Devil is an Ass, blends of romance and satire like The Shoemaker's Holiday and The Knight of the Burning Pestle, and bourgeois oddities like The London Prodigal - this volume re-examines early modern city comedy in the light of recently foregrounded historical contexts such as early modern capitalism, urban culture, the Protestant Reformation, and playhouse politics. Further, it explores the interrelations between city comedy and Shakespearean comedy both from the perspective of author rivalry and in terms of modern adaptations: the twenty-first-century concept of 'popular Shakespeare' (above all in the movie sector) seems to realign the comparatively time- and placeless Shakespearean drama with the gritty, noisy and bustling urban scene that has been city comedy's traditional preserve.