Author Description

This is the third volume of a detailed play-by-play catalogue of drama written by English, Welsh, Irish, and Scottish authors during the 110 years between the English Reformation to the English Revolution. The catalogue covers every known play, extant and lost, including some which have never before been identified. It is based on a new, complete, and systematic survey of the whole of this body of work, and is presented in chronological order. Each entry contains comprehensive information about a single play: its various titles, authorship, and date; a summary of its plot, a list of roles, and details of the human and geographical world in which the fictional action takes place; a list of sources, narrative and verbal, and a summary of its formal characteristics; details of its staging requirements; and an account of its early stage and textual history. Volume III covers the years 1590-1597 and sees the start of Shakespeare's career as a dramatist.