The origins of English tragedy

This book makes a new assessment of the background of Elizabethan tragedy in order to show the importance of embryonic tragic situations, characters, and patterns of emotion in medieval and Tudor drama. It considers how these basic elements were later combined and shaped into effective dramatic forms by current ideas about the nature of tragic action. Tragedy on the Elizabethan stage was by no means a single or homogeneous phenomenon: this study examines the reasons for the appearance of several forms of tragedy at almost the same time. Its concentration upon a limited and well-documented period of stage history makes possible further insight into the nature of tragedy in general. -- from Book Jacket.