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Romance on the Early Modern Stage
Author(s) -
Mulready Cyrus
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
literature compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.158
H-Index - 4
ISSN - 1741-4113
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00604.x
Subject(s) - romance , drama , literature , period (music) , history , term (time) , art , aesthetics , physics , quantum mechanics
In Shakespeare studies, the term romance is widely understood to refer to a group of plays from the late period of the Shakespearean canon. In looking at two plays from the period of 1590–1610, Orlando Furioso and the Arthurian romance Tom a Lincoln , this essay identifies an earlier history for the genre. I term this kind of drama ‘stage romance’, a popular genre that originated in the earliest days of the Elizabethan theater. These plays demonstrate the emergence of ‘romance’ out of a global history: the social, intellectual, and economic changes prompted by England's increasing role in an expanding global economy.