MATTHEW WOODCOCK is Senior Lecturer in Medieval and Renaissance Literature at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. He has published widely on Elizabethan and Renaissance Literature.

• AcknowledgementsNotes on the TextsIntroductionMaking the Text: Date, Sources, Textual HistoryThe Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century: Neoclassicism and Early EditionsThe Nineteenth-Century: Romantic and Victorian InterpretationsThe Early Twentieth-Century: What Makes a Good King?The Mid-Twentieth-Century: History, War and EpicThe Mid to Late Twentieth Century: Ambivalence and PlayThe Later Twentieth Century and Beyond: Power, Subversion and MasculinityA Play for the New Millennium: Nationhood, Memory and Just WarConclusionNotesSelect BibliographyIndex.