The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 4

Volume 4 of Chambers's monumental four-part study stands as the definitive treatment of anonymous Elizabethan drama, a territory scholars have rarely mapped with such precision. Here Chambers catalogs the unattributed plays, masques, and court entertainments that shaped early modern English theatre, tracing their registration with the Master of the Revels, their performance histories, and the tangled authorship debates that have persisted for centuries. Works like Arden of Feversham, Apius and Virginia, and the mysterious CROWN PRINCE OF WALES plays receive careful bibliographic treatment, with Chambers weighing manuscript evidence, printing history, and textual parallels to propose or question attributions. The volume captures a theatrical world where many plays circulated anonymously, their authorship fluid, their provenance contested, exactly the terrain that continues to provoke scholarly argument today. For anyone researching early modern drama, this volume is an indispensable companion: it documents not only what we know about these works but how we know it, revealing the evidentiary foundations upon which all subsequent scholarship builds.