Domestic Life and Domestic Tragedy in Early Modern England The Material Life of the Household

In a theatre which self-consciously cultivated its audiences' imagination, how and what did playgoers "see" on the stage? This book reconstructs one aspect of that imaginative process. It considers a range of printed and documentary evidence, the majority previously unpublished, for the way ordinary individuals thought about their houses and households; and it then explores how writers of domestic tragedies engaged those attitudes to shape their representations of domesticity. It therefore offers a new method for understanding theatrical representations, based around a truly interdisciplinary study of the interaction between literary and historical methods. The plays cited include Arden of Faversham, Two Lamentable Tragedies, A Woman Killed With Kindness, and A Yorkshire Tragedy.

Catherine Richardson is Lecturer in English and History and Fellow of The Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham.