This Earthly Stage: World and Stage in Late Medieval and Early Modern England

The thirteen essays collected in ‘This Earthly Stage’ explore intersections between the world as stage and the stage as world in late medieval and early modern England. The volume features studies of stages both familiar and unfamiliar, and worlds old and new - from the ritual performance of funerals for the fifteenth-century London elite to the electronic recreation of Shakespeare on the Internet. The essays engage with a variety of scholarly fields, including art and iconography, cultural and social history, digital humanities, literature, myth, philology, and philosophy. Most studies examine performative elements of Shakespeare’s works in relation to a representative selection of other plays from the dramatic genres in which he wrote, while they also analyse broader topics which traverse a number of plays, such as kingship and rites of civic performance in relation to stage drama. All of the essays consider the overarching issue of representation in late medieval and early modern English drama and culture through a range of theoretical approaches. This volume offers a valuable contribution to contemporary medieval and early modern scholarship, with a particular interest for those researching and teaching early modern English drama and culture.