This article argues that theories of race in the early modern period worked in tandem with national identity. This can be traced not only in the various travel narratives and speculative essays about complexion difference in the period, but also in the dramatic literature through a study of plays like The Battle of Alcazar, Titus Andronicus, and…[Read more]

This article is about petitioning scenes on the early modern English stage.

Through close-readings of Mary Tudor’s royal entry, the anonymous interlude Wealth and Health, and John Christopherson’s Exhortation alongside anecdotes of popular resistance to Mary Tudor’s antiimmigrant proclamations, this article shows that rather than a strong identification with the monarch or some sense of Englishness, Londoners more closely…[Read more]