Get the latest tech news

Making Elizabethan plays understandable and fun to read

The ultimate online source for carefully edited texts of non-Shakespearean Elizabethan, Jacobean and Caroline drama; find fully annotated versions of all our plays as well, so you can enjoy and understand the greatest literature of the greatest period of English letters.

From the moment Christopher Marlowe electrified audiences in 1586 with his monumental drama Tamburlaine the Great to the closing of the London theaters in 1642 (thanks to a wave of Puritanism sweeping England), London theater-goers were treated to a seemingly never-ending succession of brilliant tragedies, histories and comedies written by some of England’s most famous dramatists, including John Lyly, George Peele, Robert Greene, Philip Massinger and John Ford, as well as that other well-known poet, William Shakespeare. Additionally, directors and performers can read the annotated versions of the plays even as they are preparing production, so that they will have greater insight to their characters than any actors or actresses have had for over three centuries! You can find a number of carefully edited and annotated plays by the great Restoration playwright John Dryden at DivineDotComedy.org, which is managed by 21st century Renaissance man Jacob Rabinowitz.

Get the Android app