This collection of newly commissioned essays explores the extraordinary versatility of Renaissance tragedy and shows how it enables exploration of issues ranging from gender to race to religious conflict, as well as providing us with some of the earliest dramatic representations of the lives of ordinary Englishmen and women. The book mixes perspectives from emerging scholars with those of established ones and offers the first systematic examination of the full range and versatility of Renaissance tragedy as a literary genre. It works by case study, so that each chapter offers not only a definition of a particular kind of Renaissance tragedy but also new research into a particularly noteworthy or influential example of that genre. Collectively the essays examine the work of a range of dramatists and offer a critical overview of Renaissance tragedy as a genre.

Table of Contents
Introduction - Daniel Cadman, Andrew Duxfield and Lisa Hopkins
1. De Casibus tragedy: Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great - Andrew Duxfield
2. Biblical tragedy: George Peele's David and Bethsabe - Annaliese Connolly
3. Closet tragedy: Fulke Greville's Mustapha - Daniel Cadman
4. Tragedy of state: Macbeth - Alisa Manninen
5. Domestic Tragedy: Yarington(?)'s Two Lamentable Tragedies - Lisa Hopkins and Gemma Leggott
6. Rome and tragic ambivalence: the case of Jonson's Sejanus - John Curran
7. Satiric tragedy: The Revenger's Tragedy -Gabriel Rieger
8. Revenge tragedy: Hoffman - Derek Dunne
9. "Ha, O my horror!" grotesque tragedy in John Webster's The White Devil - Paul Frazer
10. She-Tragedy: lust, luxury and empire in John Fletcher and Philip Massinger's The False One - Domenico Lovascio
11. Ford's Perkin Warbeck as historical tragedy - Sarah Dewar-Watson
Caroline tragedy: James Shirley's The Traitor - Jessica Dyson
Index

Editors

Daniel Cadman is Lecturer in English at Sheffield Hallam University

Andrew Duxfield is Lecturer in English at the University of Liverpool

Lisa Hopkins is Professor of English at Sheffield Hallam University