Women on the Early Modern Stage: A Woman Killed with Kindness, The Tamer Tamed, The Duchess of Malfi, The Witch of Edmonton [Paperback]

This New Mermaids anthology brings together four plays which centre around female characters on stage: A Woman Killed With Kindness (Thomas Heywood);The Tamer Tamed(John Fletcher);The Duchess of Malfi(John Webster) andThe Witch of Edmonton(William Rowley, Thomas Dekker and John Ford) with a new introduction by leading scholar Emma Smith.

A Woman Killed with Kindnessis a domestic tragedy of property and marriage, adultery and revenge, and strips bare two women's lives in one of the first tragedies ever to be written about ordinary people.

The Tamer Tamedis a free-wheeling and witty comedy in which the place and status of women, and the nature of marriage, are subjected to sustained attention, demonstrating one way in which early modern writers were able to challenge and invert social convention, and to at least imagine alternative modes of behaviour.

The Duchess of Malfiis a classic revenge tragedy and masterpiece of the Jacobean bizarre, featuring a severed hand, a wolf-man, and a poisoned Bible.

The Witch of Edmontonis a domestic tragedy in which Elizabeth Sawyer sells her soul to the Devil to revenge her neighbours.

These four early modern plays plays upset old certainties about gender ideology: less 'chaste, silent and obedient' and more diverse, eloquent, and complex.

Emma Smithis a Fellow and Tutor at Hertford College, the University of Oxford, UK and has written widely on early modern drama, including most recently editing and introducing a collection ofFive Revenge Tragedies. She has writtenThe Cambridge Introduction to ShakespeareandThe Cambridge Guide to Shakespeare. She is part of the editorial team for the new Riverside Shakespeare, on the editorial board forLiterature CompassandShakespeare Surveyand a regular lecturer at the Globe theatre.

Introduction
Further reading
Abbreviations
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