This collection of original essays redefines the plays and theatrical culture of the years 1625 through 1642 as something more than simply post-Shakespearean or pre-Revolutionary in character.  Through local readings of the texts and institutions of the Caroline theater, leading scholars reveal the drama's intriguing mixture of political engagement, religious controversy, urbane cosmopolitanism, and commercial ingenuity.  Spanning locations both real and imagined - from London to Dublin to Tunis; from the Salisbury Court theater to the fantastic landscapes of Inigo Jones - the collection as a whole urges us to recalibrate our histories of seventeenth-century drama to account for the unprecedented innovations of the Caroline period.

Adam Zucker is Assistant Professor of Early Modern literature at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  He has published on Ben Jonson and on the Caroline playwrights Richard Brome and Thomas Nabbes. Alan B. Farmer is Assistant Professor of English at The Ohio State University.  He has published on printed drama in early modern England, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and the Caroline news trade. 

"This is a stimulating collection of essays on a period in dramatic history we know too little about. Each of the pieces here is driven by archival research that opens up new directions for inquiry. Because it challenges so much of what we assume about its subject, Localizing Caroline Drama will be indispensable for those interested in the early modern theater in England."--Douglas Bruster, the University of Texas at Austin; author of Shakespeare and the Question of Culture

"I read this excellent collection with enormous pleasure. The editors have assembled a nice balance of contributors, representing a range of approaches, and the volume is filled with fascinating, fresh information and interpretations. Mining the neglected riches of Caroline drama, the contributors show us why we should return to these plays, seek out those we've never read, and scrap our tired generalizations about the period and its drama.  The collection will inspire readers to teach these plays and to include them in their own research projects."--Frances E. Dolan, the University of California, Davis
 
“Localizing Caroline Drama offers a genuinely interdisciplinary cultural history, providing not a single grand overarching reading that treats the Caroline period simply as the harbinger of catastrophe but a set of consciously local- that is, focused and engaged rather than simply topical- analyses which refuse to be reduced solely to their points of identity yet which together form a volume that is more a multiply-authored monograph than a collection of essays. This timely and groundbreaking book locates Caroline theatrical culture in a range of places and contexts never before given their due: from Dublin to Tunis, from printshop to dancing manual, from commerce to crusade. ‘Decadent’ no more, Caroline drama emerges as a series of vibrant interventions in contemporary culture – aesthetic, political, sexual, economic, theological - far outstripping the limitations of the ‘pre-revolutionary.’”--Gordon McMullan, Reader in English, King’s College London