The Arden Guide to Renaissance Drama is a single critical and contextual resource for students embarking on an in-depth exploration of early modern drama, providing both critical insight and accessible contextual information. This companion equips students with the information needed to situate the plays in their socio-political, intellectual and literary contexts. Divided into two parts, it introduces students to the major authors and significant dramatic texts of the period and emphasises the importance of both a historicist and close-reading approach to better engage with these works.
The Guide offers:
· primary texts from key early modern scholars such as Machiavelli, Heywood and Sidney
· contextual information vital to a full understanding of the drama of the period
· close readings of 14 of the most widely studied play texts by Shakespeare and his contemporaries
· a single resource to accompany any study of early modern drama
This is an ideal companion for students of Renaissance drama, offering students and teachers a range of primary contextual sources to illuminate their understanding alongside close critical readings of the major plays of the period.

Brinda Charry is Associate Professor of English at Syracuse University, USA. Born and raised in India, she completed her doctoral degree at Syracuse University, NY before moving to Keene in 2005 to teach early modern British literature and culture. Her areas of research and scholarship include Shakespeare, intercultural encounters in the 16th and 17th centuries, and constructions of race and religious difference in the time period. Charry is also a writer of fiction and has published two novels The Hottest Day of the Year and Naked in the Wind, as well as a collection of short-stories entitled First Love.

Part I
1. Politics and Society
2. Men and Women
3. Travel and Trade
4. Humanism
5. The stage
6. Authors, Books and Readers
7. Genre
8. Language and Style

Part II
The Alchemist
Arden of Faversham
Doctor Faustus
The Duchess of Malfi
Hamlet
Henry V
The Jew of Malta
The Knight of the Burning Pestle
The Roaring Girl
The Shoemaker's Holiday
The Spanish Tragedy
The Tempest
The Tragedy of Mariam
Volpone
Appendices
Index