A Critical Edition of the Life and Death of Jack Straw (1594)

Essential to an understanding of the politics of the history play in the 1590s through its presentation of the original `peasants' revolt' of 1381. This first-ever annotated edition in English will help to broaden the debates around the politics of the drama at the end of Elizabeth's reign, combining a synthesis of previous scholarship and criticism with the fruits of new research. It offers a lightly modernized and corrected edition of the text and of the play's history, it features a long critical discussion placing the play in its intellectual and critical context. Extensive selections from the two major chronicle sources, Holinshed's and Grafton's Chronicles, and the relevant sections of two other texts often associated with the play, Nelson's Lord Mayor's Pageant of 1590 and Richard Johnson's 1592 Worthies of London.