It is now over twenty years since revisionist history began to transform our understanding of early modern England. The debates between revisionists and their critics goes on. But it has become a sterile debate in which both sides are confined by an attenuated conception of politics. Meanwhile scholars in other disciplines have opened new approaches to the political culture of the English Renaissance state, emphasising the importance of representations of authority and reading plays, poems and portraits as texts of power. Kevin Sharpe has been at the forefront of the dialogue between historians and critics, and a leading exponent of interdisciplinary approaches. In the essays collected here, and in an important new remapping of the field, he revisits earlier debates and urges a 'cultural turn' that will refigure our understanding of the history and politics of early modern England and the materials and methods of our study.
