From \_\_Mankind\_\_ to Marlowe: Growth of Structure in the Popular Drama of Tudor England

Perhaps a scholar can claim only a remote and pallid kinship with the "mankind" hero of the morality play. Even so, I must, like Mankind or Everyman, give thanks for all those counselors who have compassionately watched my struggle toward an academic state of grace. Among my many teachers I am especially indebted to Professors Alfred Harbage and Bartlett Jere Whiting of Harvard University. Whatever I now know of late medieval and Renaissance drama I owe to their instruction and example. Many attitudes and conclusions contained in my study are properly theirs to an extent that can never be indicated by citation. In a different manner, but certainly to no less degree, I am grateful to my parents, both Professors of English at Duke University, who have read and reread this study with an eye to style and accuracy, and who have shared with me their faith in the vocation of teaching. Professors Gerald Bentley of Princeton University and Jonas Barish of the University of California at Berkeley read the manuscript as it neared completion, and rescued me from many errors of fact and judgment. I wish also to thank Professors Fredson Bowers and Lester Beaurline of the University of Virginia, Miss Kathleen Ahem and other editors of the Harvard University Press, and the library staffs at Harvard, Duke, and the University of Virginia. Most of all I must acknowledge the help of my wife, herself a teacher and loving taskmistress of English usage. Hers has been a service beyond the call of any duty, marital or otherwise. She has read and discussed with me all of the Tudor popular drama, and has painstakingly ameliorated the style of virtually every sentence in this book. Notwithstanding all this guidance, the ultimate assault on truth had to be mine; and I must finally confess, with Mankind, that any failures are plainly attributable to my own weak merit and not to a lack of merciful warning. viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Two important studies of the Tudor stage have been published since I began this present investigation four years ago: T. W. Craik, Acknowledgments Contents I. Introduction: From Mankind to Marlowe II. Criteria for a Popular Repertory III. Auspices for the Élite Drama IV. The Popular Canon V. "Four Men and a Boy" VI. The Tradition of Versatility VII. Doubling Patterns in the 1580's and 1590's VIII. The Origins of Popular Dramatic Structure IX. The Pioneering Contributions of Bale and Skelton X. The Intermediate Morality: Repetition, Expansion, and Elaboration XI. Dual Protagonists and a Formula for Homiletic Tragedy XII. The Transition to Chronicle XIII. The Transition to Romance XIV. Tamburlaine the Great XV. The Jew of Malta XVI. Edward II XVII. The Conflict of Conscience and Doctor Faustus Appendix: Plays "Offered for Acting" The Texts of the Plays A List of Works Frequently Cited Notes Index