Staging the Renaissance demonstrates the variety and vitality of both contemporary criticism and of Renaissance drama. The collected essays analyse the dynamic process within Renaissance drama where texts stage multiple collaborations between playwright, actor, stage, audience, and the pressures of the social, economic and political environment. They offer inspired critical reassessments of individual non-Shakespearean plays, rethinking both canonical classics and rediscovering such marginal texts as The Tragedy of Mariam . Through such critical analysis, the Renaissance theatre emerges as a site of rich confluence of cultural forces; a place where social meanings are both formed and transformed.