Theatre of the English and Italian Renaissance studies interrelationships between English and Italian Theatre of the Renaissance period, including texts, performance and performance spaces, and cultural parallels and contrasts. Connections are traced between Italian writers including Aretino, Castiglione and Zorenzo Valla and such English playwrights as Shakespeare, Lyly and Ben Jonson. The impact of Italian popular tradition on Shakespeare's comedies is analysed, together with Jonson's theatrical recreation of Venice, and Italian sources for the court masques of Jonson, Daniel and Campion.

List of Plates - Preface - Notes on the Contributors - PART 1: PERFORMANCE AND PLAYING PLACES OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE - The Changing Scene: Plays and Playhouses in the Italian Renaissance; M.Anderson - Scripted Theatre and the Commedia dell'Arte; R.Andrews - The Theatrical Activities of Palla di Lorenzo Strozzi in Lyons in the 1540s; J.Bryce - PART 2: THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE CONNECTION: BEN JONSON - Ben Jonson's Masques and Italian Culture; J.Peacock - Jonson's Venice; R.B.Parker - Aretino's Comedies and the Italian 'Erasmian' Connection in Shakespeare and Jonson; C.Cairns - PART 3: THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE CONNECTION: LYLY AND SHAKESPEARE - Parallels between Italian and English Courtly Plays in the Sixteenth Century: Carlo Turco and John Lyly; N.Messora - Courtier and Courtesy: Castiglione, Lyly and Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona; M.C.Bradbrook - Shakespeare's Verismo and the Italian Popular Tradition; H.M.Richmond - Honest Iago and the Lusty Moor: the Humanistic Drama of honestas/voluptas in a Shakespearean Context; M.de Panizza Lorch - Postscript: Elizabethan Dramatists and Italy; L.Salingar - Further Reading - Index