Shakespeare and the Admiral's Men Reading across Repertories on the London Stage, 1594–1600

For most of the 1590s, the Admiral's Men were the main competitors of Shakespeare's company in the London theatres. Not only did they stage old plays by dramatists such as Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd: their playwrights invented the genres of humours comedy (with An Humorous Day's Mirth) and city comedy (with Englishmen for My Money), while other new plays such as A Knack to Know an Honest Man and The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon were important influences on Shakespeare. This is the first book to read the Admiral's repertory against Shakespeare's plays of the 1590s, showing both how Shakespeare drew on their innovations and how his plays influenced Admiral's dramatists in turn. Shedding new light on well-known plays and offering detailed analysis of less familiar ones, it offers a fresh perspective on the dramatic culture of the 1590s.

Acknowledgements; Note on dating; Introduction; 1. 'How might we make a famous comedie': from A Knack to Know an Honest Man to The Merchant of Venice; 2 'Hobgoblins abroad': from Doctor Faustus to A Midsummer Night's Dream; 3. 'I speak of Africa and golden joys': Henry IV and the Stukeley plays; 4. 'Sundrie variable and pleasing humors': new comedies, 1597–8; 5. 'Nor pure religion by their lips profaned': Oldcastle, Robin Hood, and As You Like It; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

Tom Rutter is Lecturer in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama at the University of Sheffield. He is the author of Work and Play on the Shakespearean Stage (Cambridge, 2008) and The Cambridge Introduction to Christopher Marlowe (Cambridge, 2012), as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters on early modern drama. He has recently published on 'Hamlet, Pirates, and Purgatory' in Renaissance and Reformation, and on 'The Spanish Tragedy and Virgil' in the forthcoming The Spanish Tragedy: A Critical Reader. His article 'Marlowe, the 'Mad Priest of the Sun', and Heliogabalus' won the Early Theatre prize for best note in 2009–10. He is a co-editor of the journal Shakespeare.