There are so many books about the Early Modern period worth exploring. Here are a few that we dipped into during the project, to get a little closer to Dekker and Jonson and their late sixteenth century world.
Anne Barton (2008) Ben Jonson: Dramatist (Cambridge University Press)
T Dekker (2024) The Shoemakers’ Holiday (ed. J Loxley) The Arden Shakespeare (Bloomsbury Publishing)
T Dekker, J Ford and W Rowley (2017) The Witch of Edmonton (ed. L Munro). The Arden Shakespeare (Bloomsbury Publishing).
I Donaldson (2011) Ben Jonson: A Life (Oxford University Press)
D Freebury-Jones (2024) Shakespeare’s Borrowed Feathers: How Early Modern Playwrights Shaped the World’s Greatest Writer (Manchester University Press)
T Gray (1998) The Lost Chronicle of Barnstaple 1586 – 1611 (The Devon Association)
A Gurr (2009) The Shakespearian Stage 1574 – 1642 (Cambridge University Press)
B Jonson (1973) Three Comedies (Penguin)
M Kaufman (2017) Black Tudors (Oneworld Publications)
T Lockwood and M White (eds)(2007) Arden of Faversham New Mermaids (Methuen Drama)
E Norton (2017) The Lives of Tudor Women, (Bloomsbury Publishing PLC)
GR Price (1969) Thomas Dekker (Twayne)
C Richardson (2006) Domestic Life and Domestic Tragedy in Early Modern England (Manchester University Press)
J Shapiro (2005) 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (Faber & Faber Ltd)
G Taylor and J Lavagnino (eds) (2007) Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Culture: A Companion to the Collected Works (Oxford University Press)
S Wells (2006) Shakespeare & Co (Penguin Books Ltd)
D Bevington, L Engle, KE Maus and E Rasmussen (eds) (2002) English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology (WW Norton & Co)
D McInnis, M Steggle, M Teramura and RL Knutson (eds) The Lost Plays Database. https://lostplays.folger.edu/Page_of_Plymouth
A very useful source of information about lost plays of the Early Modern period, including Page of Plymouth.
Podcasts
There are also some very useful podcasts:
P Rowe (2020) The History of European Theatre. Philip Rowe’s podcast has episodes about Thomas Dekker and Ben Jonson: Th e History of European Theatre
E Smith (2009/2015) Not Shakespeare: Elizabethan and Jacobean Popular Theatre (Oxford University Press). Not Shakespeare: Elizabethan and Jacobean Popular Theatre | University of Oxford Podcasts
An interesting series of lectures by Emma Smith on Early Modern plays and their historical context. The series includes episodes about some of the plays that Jonson and Dekker wrote, or co-cowrote with others (The Alchemist, The Shoemakers’ Holiday, The Witch of Edmonton).
C Nicholl and T Jones (2021) Elizabethan True Crime (The LRB Podcast). Podcast: Charles Nicholl and Thomas Jones · Elizabethan True Crime
Charles Nicholl and Thomas Jones discuss the dramatization of real-life murders on the English stage during the 1590s.