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'Edward IV' (1599) was printed no less than six times up to 1626, and was one of the best loved plays of the early modern period, but this edition is the first since the 1870s. The play premiered at a moment when the representation of medieval history in any format was coming under the hostile scrutiny of the Elizabethan government. Yet the playwright produced a text which was at once generically complex (the play blurs the distinction between chronicle history and 'domestic' tragedy), brilliantly assured in its dramatic craftsmanship, and politically explosive.
The text of this new paperback edition has already been used by the actors at Shakespeare's Globe when they gave the first London performance of 'Edward IV' for more than four centuries. By demonstrating the playwright's dextrous marshalling of a remarkable range of sources, and by examining afresh the dramatist's singular theatrical technique, this volume reopens an exciting if difficult play to a new generation of scholars and performers.