Romance on the Early Modern Stage : English Expansion Before and After Shakespeare

What is dramatic romance? Scholars have long turned to Shakespeare's biography to answer this question, marking his 'late plays' as the beginning and end of the dramatic romance. This book identifies an earlier history for this genre, revealing how stage romances imaginatively expanded audience interest in England's emerging global economy.

In Shakespeare studies, ''Romance'' is widely understood to refer to the plays composed and performed in the waning days of the playwright''s career. Romance on the Early Modern Stage introduces a new history for the genre, one that dates back to the first years of the commercial theatre in London. These early plays drew on popular stories depicting adventurous travel, imperial conquest, and exploration of new realms. Their staging also altered the practices of the theatre, as playwrights embraced a dramatic poetics to accommodate the extravagant narratives of these stories. Romance on the Early Modern Stage aligns such formal alterations in stagecraft with an array of materials drawn from early modern global exploration to argue that dramatic fantasies both reflected and informed England''s overseas ambitions. The book revises how romance is understood within the dramatic canon - from romance enabling empire in Henry V and Milton''s Comus, to the ''anti-romance'' staged in The Tempest.