This set not only reissues Volumes 1, 2 (part I and II) and 3, originally published by Routledge & Kegan Paul in 1958, 1963, 1972 and 1981, but also, for the first time, Volume 4 is being produced to complete this fascinating and valuable set.
Early English Stages is a history of the development of dramatic spectacle and stage convention in England from the beginning of the fourteenth century to 1660. The volumes are available as a compete set or individually, thereby offering the opportunity for owners of the original three volumes to bring the set to its natural conclusion.
The final volume provides an overview of the rebirth of drama within Christian society in Western Europe late in the 10th Century AD; its subsequent development into ever-widening educative and pleasurable productions throughout the next six centuries, followed by a sudden eclipse provoked by constitutional crisis in England culminating in the Civil War, which brought all acting in England to an end for nearly twenty years.