Overview

The premise of this work is that plays about war and the ""art of war"" literature proliferating in the 1590s intervene in the military realities of the last few years of Elizabeth's reign much more closely than is appreciated. The author seeks to reconstruct the particular anxieties which surround the military events of the 1590s through a significant but usually neglected genre, the treatises and manuals of war, in order to deepen understanding of the plays themselves as staged responses to specific wartime conditions. The study re-evaluates the experience, practices and concepts of war by considering them alongside historical events, prescriptive writings and dramatic representations.

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9780754602743

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Reviews

'... interdisciplinary and historically precise... 1590s Drama and Militarism is a welcome addition to the field.' Sixteenth Century Journal 'Taunton writes with persuasive candor and impressive documentation about the confusions found in dramatic and non-dramatic considerations of military procedures and the ways in which they both reflect and influence contemporary military practices. By design, her book raises more questions than it settles. As a result, one emerges from it with an understanding of a significant cultural cause for some of the contradictions and ambiguities in the plays under scrutiny and with a greater appreciation of the instability and the anomalies of military thinking and practices during the final years of Elizabeth's reign.' Renaissance Quarterly '...an extraordinary contribution to what many critics have seen as a neglected area of scholarship...Fascinatingly illustrated...the book is beautifully produced, readable and instructive.' Literature and History

'... interdisciplinary and historically precise... 1590s Drama and Militarism is a welcome addition to the field.' Sixteenth Century Journal 'Taunton writes with persuasive candor and impressive documentation about the confusions found in dramatic and non-dramatic considerations of military procedures and the ways in which they both reflect and influence contemporary military practices. By design, her book raises more questions than it settles. As a result, one emerges from it with an understanding of a significant cultural cause for some of the contradictions and ambiguities in the plays under scrutiny and with a greater appreciation of the instability and the anomalies of military thinking and practices during the final years of Elizabeth's reign.' Renaissance Quarterly '...an extraordinary contribution to what many critics have seen as a neglected area of scholarship...Fascinatingly illustrated...the book is beautifully produced, readable and instructive.' Literature and History

Author Information

Nina Taunton is a lecturer in English at Brunel University. She has published several essays and refereed articles on Renaissance drama, and is co-editor of The Body in Late Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Ashgate, 2000).

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