The heart of this book is its fully annotated, critical editions of the surviving work of Richard Edwards, one of the most influential poets and dramatists writing in England before Shakespeare. Ros King's extensive introduction, identifying the holes in the documentary evidence that might accommodate this important but now little known writer, rewrites the history of pre-Shakespearean drama, illustrates new approaches to sixteenth-century prosody and to the modernisation of dramatic poetry, and re-evaluates the public role of theatre and poetry during a particularly turbulent period in English history. While it will be essential reading for specialist scholars, it will also be of much wider interest. The introduction is highly accessible which makes it an appropriate text-book for students in a field where few textbooks are available. It will appeal to the current appetite among the reading public for biography, while the play, poems and songs are themselves very appealing.