First published in English 1961, this reissue relates the problems of form and style to the development of dramatic speech in pre-Shakespearean tragedy. The work offers positive standards by which to assess the development of pre-Shakespearean drama and, by tracing certain characteristics in Elizabethan tragedy which were to have a bearing on Shakespeare's dramatic technique, helps to illuminate the foundations on which Shakespeare built his dramatic oeuvre.
Part 1 1. Introduction 2. The Set Speech in Renaissance Drama and Contemporary Theory 3. The Basic Types of Dramatic Set Speech Part 2 4. Gorboduc 5. English Classical Plays 6. Locrine 7. Kyd 8. Marlowe I. Tamburlaine 9. Imitations of Marlowe's Tamburlaine. Selimus and The Wounds of Civil War 10. Marlowe II. The Later Plays 11. Peele 12. Greene 13. Popular Drama and History Plays Part 3 14. The Dramatic Lament and Its Forms 15. The Pre-Shakespearian Dramatic Lament
