A collection of 32 English dramas from Nicholas Udall's Ralph Roister Doister of about 1553 to James Shirley's The Cardinal, first performed shortly before the theaters were closed in 1642. The collection is in modernized spelling and includes all of the major playwrights of the period other than Shakespeare, including George Peele, Robert Greene, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, Thomas Dekker, John Webster, Ben Jonson, Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Thomas Middleton, Philip Massinger, and John Ford.