A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 07

This seventh volume in Dodsley's influential collection gathers three plays that charting the emotional and political extremes of early English drama. At its heart lies "Tancred and Gismunda," a visceral tragedy adapted from Boccaccio in which a king's suffocating love for his widowed daughter curdles into something darker when he discovers her secret affection for the Count of Palurin. The play unfolds through intense confrontations, desperate subterfuge, and the mounting tragedy that ensues when paternal authority collides with forbidden desire. Also included are "The Wounds of Civil War," Lodge's brutal examination of Roman factional conflict, and "Mucedorus," the beloved comedic romance that delighted audiences for over a century. Together these plays reveal the raw, unapologetic emotional intensity of theatrical work that predates modern sensibilities: love affairs that end in death, fathers who destroy what they claim to protect, and political violence presented not as metaphor but as visceral reality. For readers willing to meet these works on their own terms, they offer a window into a theatrical world where tragedy was not merely performed but felt in the marrow.