Harriet Phillips is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in English at Queen Mary University of London. Her research focuses on literature, popular culture and book history between 1500 and 1800. Her work has appeared in Shakespeare, Review of English Studies, Renaissance Studies, Parergon and Studies in Philology. She co-edited A Handbook of Editing Early Modern Texts (2018), and is co-editing Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica (forthcoming).

'Harriet Phillips' study is an exceptionally fine work. Her readings of individual literary texts, canonical and non-canonical alike, are consistently sharp, and are elegantly placed at the service of the wider argument. This book will be ranked among the most important recent studies of the place of the past in early modern England.' Philip Schwyzer, University of Exeter

• Introduction: the merry worlds of merry England; 1. Merry worlds: Tudor nostalgia; 2. Dreamless art for the people: cheap print and catharsis; 3. Common people: drama and dialogue; 4. Martin and anti-Martin, 1588–90; 5. Merry histories, 1598–99; 6. Shakespeare's Ballads, 1598–1610; 7. The merry worlds of Windsor in 1600; Epilogue.

Harriet Phillips is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in English at Queen Mary University of London. Her research focuses on literature, popular culture and book history between 1500 and 1800. Her work has appeared in Shakespeare, Review of English Studies, Renaissance Studies, Parergon and Studies in Philology. She co-edited A Handbook of Editing Early Modern Texts (2018), and is co-editing Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica (forthcoming).

'Harriet Phillips' study is an exceptionally fine work. Her readings of individual literary texts, canonical and non-canonical alike, are consistently sharp, and are elegantly placed at the service of the wider argument. This book will be ranked among the most important recent studies of the place of the past in early modern England.' Philip Schwyzer, University of Exeter

• Introduction: the merry worlds of merry England; 1. Merry worlds: Tudor nostalgia; 2. Dreamless art for the people: cheap print and catharsis; 3. Common people: drama and dialogue; 4. Martin and anti-Martin, 1588–90; 5. Merry histories, 1598–99; 6. Shakespeare's Ballads, 1598–1610; 7. The merry worlds of Windsor in 1600; Epilogue.

Harriet Phillips is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in English at Queen Mary University of London. Her research focuses on literature, popular culture and book history between 1500 and 1800. Her work has appeared in Shakespeare, Review of English Studies, Renaissance Studies, Parergon and Studies in Philology. She co-edited A Handbook of Editing Early Modern Texts (2018), and is co-editing Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica (forthcoming).

'Harriet Phillips' study is an exceptionally fine work. Her readings of individual literary texts, canonical and non-canonical alike, are consistently sharp, and are elegantly placed at the service of the wider argument. This book will be ranked among the most important recent studies of the place of the past in early modern England.' Philip Schwyzer, University of Exeter

• Introduction: the merry worlds of merry England; 1. Merry worlds: Tudor nostalgia; 2. Dreamless art for the people: cheap print and catharsis; 3. Common people: drama and dialogue; 4. Martin and anti-Martin, 1588–90; 5. Merry histories, 1598–99; 6. Shakespeare's Ballads, 1598–1610; 7. The merry worlds of Windsor in 1600; Epilogue.