Tower of London in English Renaissance Drama

Kristen Deiter is Assistant Professor of English at Tennessee Technological University, USA.

"This text offers a provocative and careful study that reassesses the role of the Tower of London by examining the architectural building as a theatrical showplace and an icon of terror in the early modern period. Deiter does a wonderful job of establishing that dramatic representations of the Tower expanded its iconographic meaning by focusing on the Tower as a site of instability, rather than of royal authority. She places her analysis within a larger historical context and a reading of a significant number of cultural artifacts, including diaries, portraits, tracts, poetry, ballads, and woodcuts…Readers interested in scholarship on cultural studies of architecture, artifacts, and the theater as a place for commentary on social and political dissent will find Deiter’s book of particular interest as it makes important contributions to each of these realms of inquiry." --Anne-Marie E. Schuler, Ohio State University, Sixteenth Century Journal

• List of ImagesAcknowledgmentsChapter One: Introduction: Historicizing Original Tower Play AudiencesChapter Two: The Tower of London as a Cultural Icon before the Tower PlaysChapter Three: Stage vs. State: The Struggle for the TowerChapter Four: The Tower of London: Dramatic Emblem of OppositionChapter Five: Reading English Nationhood in the Dramatic Tower of LondonCoda: The Tower of London: An Evolving IconNotesBibliographyIndex