Publisher's Synopsis
This anthology constitutes a new archive of source materials in the field of Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre. It is a collection of over 100 wills left by those who participated in the life of the Elizabethan theatre - from actors and dramatists to carpenters and costumiers. The wills not only offer vital historical evidence but are also important human documents, testaments to the social, financial, religious and sentimental lives of Shakespeare's contemporaries.;Of the wills reprinted here, one third are newly discovered, one fifth printed in full for the first time and many of the rest printed for the first time from the original wills, thus preserving the vacillations and abandoned intentions of the testators. All are annotated and referenced throughout.
