1st Edition
English Drama from Early Times to the Elizabethans Its Background, Origins and Developments
Prologue: of dramatic history Part 1 1. Pagan rituals 2. Rome and Christendom 3. Christian ritual drama 3a. Ritual comic relief 4. Gothic drama Part 2 5. The castle and the pin 6. The morality genus 7. Interludes 8. Interlude of church and state 9. The stage of academic imports 10. Mungrell tragy-comedie Epilogue: from the Elizabethan stage
Biography
A.P. Rossiter (1903–1957) was educated at Bristol Grammar School and Selwyn College, Cambridge, where he earned first-class honours in both Natural Sciences and English. After teaching briefly in Cambridge, he served as an Instructor at the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy in Hiroshima from 1928–1934. Returning to England, he taught at Durham University for ten years while serving as a Home Guard sergeant during WWII. In 1945, he was elected Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, where he served as Tutor and Director of Studies in English until his death.
Review of the first publication:
‘In this able and closely argued essay on the theatres which preceded the Elizabethan and Jacobean, Mr Rossiter has made a useful contribution both to the better understanding of early English drama and to our appreciation of its relations with the Shakespearian theatre…The book, in fact, is a study of the imagination, both popular and literary, upon which the drama drew.’
— The Times Literary Supplement
