This collection of essays explores the material, economic and dramatic roles of stage properties in early modern English drama.

List of illustrations; Notes on contributors; 1. Introduction: towards a materialist account of stage properties Jonathan Gil Harris and Natasha Korda; Part I. Histories: 2. Properties of skill: product placement in early English artisanal drama Jonathan Gil Harris; 3. The dramatic life of objects in the early modern theatre Douglas Bruster; Part II. Furniture: 4. Things with little social life (Henslowe's theatrical properties and Elizabethan household fittings) Lena Cowen Orlin; 5. Properties of domestic life: the table in Heywood's A Woman Killed with Kindness Catherine Richardson; 6. 'Let me the curtains draw': the dramatic and symbolic properties of the bed in Shakespearean tragedy Sasha Roberts; Part III. Costumes: 7. Properties in clothes: the materials of the Renaissance theatre Peter Stallybrass; 8. Women's theatrical properties Natasha Korda; 9. Staging the beard: masculinity in early modern English culture Will Fisher; Part IV. Hand Properties: 10. Properties of marriage: proprietary conflict and the calculus of gender in Epicoene Juana Green; 11. The woman's parts of Cymbeline Valerie Wayne; 12. Wonder-effects: Othello's handkerchief Paul Yachnin; Appendix; Index.