Description:This collection offers a wide-ranging, authoritative guide to research on drama and society in Shakespeare's England, mapping the variety of approaches to the context and work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Its contents include chapters by senior figures within the field as well as by emerging scholars working on the most exciting areas of current research. As well as surveying significant 21st-century trends in the study of early modern drama, they offer original, state-of-the-art work on theatre history, social and cultural contexts of the theatre, and recent approaches in criticism and performance.Chapters explore early modern drama through a range of cultural contexts and approaches, from material culture and emotion studies to early modern race work and new directions in gender and sexuality studies. The volume also includes a ground-breaking new chronology of early modern drama, a survey of resources, and an annotated bibliography. Combining original research with an account of the current state of play, The Arden Research Handbook of Early Modern Drama will be an invaluable resource both to experienced scholars and to those beginning work in the field.