Lost Plays in Shakespeare's England

Lost plays are a source of significant information on playwrights, playing companies, audiences, and venues in Shakespeare's England. They include plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, and other canonical playwrights in addition to anonymous plays and the writings of lesser known writers. Details preserved depend upon the record, but may include title, date, authorship, company affiliation, plot, and even details of performance. This edited collection examines assumptions about what a lost play is and how it can be talked about; how lost plays can be reconstructed, particularly when they use narratives already familiar to playgoers; and how lost plays can force us to reassess extant plays, particularly through ideas of repertory studies. Lost plays, it argues, improve our knowledge of playwrights' and playing companies' overall dramatic output.

David McInnis is Lecturer in English and Theatre Studies at University of Melbourne, Australia. He is currently editing Dekker's Old Fortunatus for the Revels Plays series. In addition to his monograph, Mind-Travelling and Voyage Drama in Early Modern England (2013), his essays have been published in Review of English Studies; Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England; Studies in English Literature, 1500?1900; and elsewhere. With Roslyn L. Knutson, he is founder and co-editor of the Lost Plays Database.

Matthew Steggle is Professor of English at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. His publications include editions of early modern plays for Richard Brome Online (2010); The Cambridge Works of Ben Jonson (2012); and The Norton Shakespeare, 3rd edition (forthcoming, 2015). His current project is a monograph discussing ten lost plays.

Acknowledgements
Notes on the Contributors
A Note on Convention
Introduction Nothing Will Come of Nothing? Or, What Can We Learn from Plays that Don't Exist?; David McInnis and Matthew Steggle
PART I: WHAT IS A LOST PLAY?
1.What's a Lost Play?: Toward a Taxonomy of Lost Plays; William Proctor Williams
2.Ur-Plays and other exercises in Making Stuff Up; Roslyn L. Knutson
3.What is Lost of Shakespearean Plays, Besides a Few Titles?; Andrew Gurr
4.Lost, or Rather Surviving as a Very Short Document; Matthew Steggle
5.Lumpers and Splitters; John H. Astington
PART II: WORKING WITH LOST PLAYS
6.'2 Fortune's Tennis' and the Admiral's Men; David McInnis
7.Brute Parts: From Troy to Britain at the Rose, 1595–1600; Misha Teramura
8.The Admiral's Lost Arthurian Plays; Paul Whitfield White
9.Lost Plays and the Repertory of Lord Strange's Men; Lawrence Manley
10.Thomas Watson, Playwright: Origins of Modern English Drama; Michael J. Hirrel
11.Lost Stage Friars and their Narratives; Christopher Matusiak
12.Reimagining Gillian: The Merry Wives of Windsor and the Lost 'Friar Fox and Gillian of Brentford'; Christi Spain-Savage
PART III: MOVING FORWARD
13.Where to Find Lost Plays; Martin Wiggins
Bibliography
Index