**Four great elizabethan plays**: The literary Renaissance in England is probably best exemplified by the Elizabethan dramatists who started a long and rich national tradition. The time was ripe for the theater; the humanistic revival of interest in Roman tragedy gave writers excellent models of form; the increasing audiences gave them incentive. The plays in this collection, ranging from tragedy to comedy, all reflect the spirit of the Elizabethan Age: an enormous vitality and unquenchable thirst for every aspect of human life from the most superficial inanities to the most profound and perplexing torments of the soul.
