Four Renaissance Comedies: The Old Wives Tale The Shoemakers Holiday The Alchemist A New Way to Pay Old Debts

This anthology of four Elizabethan and Jacobean comedies (George Peele's The Old Wives Tale, Ben Jonson's The Alchemist, Philip Massinger's A New Way to Pay Old Debts, and Thomas Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday) offers fully modernized and annotated texts and demonstrates the range and variety of English Renaissance comedy. The general introduction surveys the theory and practice of early modern comedy in its time and ours, and each play is prefaced by a brief introduction addressing issues of authorship, theatrical provenance and subsequent performance history.