15 scholars and theatre practitioners explore a wide range of late 16th- and early 17th-century English plays primarily as pieces for performance both then and now. Concentrating mainly on Shakespeare, they examine the performative implications of the sonnets, the use of stage documents, the different means of representating ghosts, the force of openings and closings of particular plays and the boundaries between actor, character, and audience. Detailed discussions of Love’s Labour’s Lost , A Midsummer Night’s Dream , Twelfth Night , Hamlet , Coriolanus , King John , Henry VIII and The Tempest are included. There are also performance studies of Marlow’s Dr Faustus and Edward II , a re-evaluation of some lesser-known plays by Thomas Middleton, an estimate of the differences in characterization between Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and an account of the Rose Theatre.