This collection of essays brings together theories of play and game with theatre and performance to produce new understandings of the history and design of early modern English drama. Through literary analysis and embodied practice, an international team of distinguished scholars examines a wide range of games—from dicing to bowling to roleplaying to videogames—to uncover their fascinating ramifications for the stage in Shakespeare’s era and our own. Foregrounding ludic elements challenges the traditional view of drama as principally mimesis, or imitation, revealing stageplays to be improvisational experiments and participatory explorations into the motive, means, and value of recreation. Delving into both canonical masterpieces and hidden gems, this innovative volume stakes a claim for play as the crucial link between games and early modern theatre, and for the early modern theatre as a critical site for unraveling the continued cultural significance and performative efficacy of gameplay today.

Tom Bishop is Professor and former Head of English at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, where he teaches Shakespeare, Renaissance literature, and Drama. He is the author of Shakespeare and the Theatre of Wonder (Cambridge, 1996), the translator of Ovid’s Amores (Carcanet, 2003), a co-editor of Pericles, Prince of Tyre (Internet Shakespeare Editions), and a continuing general editor of The Shakespearean International Yearbook (Routledge). He has published work on Elizabethan music, Shakespeare, Jonson, court masques, Australian literature, the Renaissance Bible, early modern religion, and other topics. He is currently editing As You Like It for the Arden Shakespeare (fourth series) and working on a book on Shakespeare’s Theatre Games.

Gina Bloom is Professor of English at the University of California, Davis. Her book Voice in Motion: Staging Gender, Shaping Sound in Early Modern England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007) was named best book of the year from The Society for the Study of Early Modern Women. Her second book Gaming the Stage: Playable Media and the Rise of English Commercial Theater (University of Michigan Press, 2018) was Runner Up for Outstanding Book Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE). She co-edited with Susan Bennett a special issue on Shakespeare and Performance Studies for Shakespeare Bulletin and has published articles in edited collections and journals, including Shakespeare Quarterly, Shakespeare Studies, and Theatre Survey. Bloom co-created the mixed reality Shakespeare game Play the Knave, exhibiting it in theaters, cultural institutions, libraries, and classrooms around the world. She is a former Trustee for the Shakespeare Association of America.

Erika T. Lin is an Associate Professor in the Ph.D. Program in Theatre and Performance at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She is the author of Shakespeare and the Materiality of Performance, which received the 2013 David Bevington Award for Best New Book in Early Drama Studies. Her prize-winning essays have appeared in Theatre Journal, New Theatre Quarterly, and many edited collections. She is currently writing a book on seasonal festivities and early modern commercial theatre, a project recognized by various honors and grants including an Andrew W. Mellon Long-Term Fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library. She recently served as the Book Review Editor for Theatre Survey and serves on the Board of Trustees for the Shakespeare Association of America.

Introduction (Tom Bishop, Gina Bloom, Erika T. Lin)
Part I
1. The Player’s Game: The Activity of the Player in Early Modern Drama (Stephen Purcell)
2. “The Madnes of Tenys” and the Commercialization of Pastimes in Early Tudor London (David Kathman)
3. The Roll of the Dice and the Whims of Fate in Sixteenth-Century Morality Drama (Katherine Steele Brokaw)
4. “The games afoote”: Playing, Preying, and Projecting in Richard Brome’s The Court Beggar (Heather Hirschfeld)
Part II
5. Playing with Paradoxes in Troilus and Cressida (Patricia Badir)
6. Bowling Alone, or the whole point of no return (Paul Menzer)
7. Playing (in) the Streets: Games and Adaptation in The Merchant of Venice (Marissa Greenberg)
Part III
8. The Moods of Gamification in Tempest (Ellen MacKay)
9. Videogames and Hamlet: Experiencing Tragic Choice and Consequences (Rebecca Bushnell)
10. Shakespeare Video Games, Adaptation/Appropriation, and Collaborative Reception (Geoffrey Way)
11. Shakespeare, Game, and Play in Digital Pedagogical Shakespeare Games (Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Shawn DeSouza-Coelho)
Epilogue
Field of Play: Gamifying Early Modern Theatre and Performance Studies (Natasha Korda)
Index