The plays of the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists who were Shakespeare's contemporaries have tended to be underestimated and unjustly neglected. The editor of this volume has sought to redress the balance by making a representative selection that will be found useful by students of literature and the theatre alike. It contains three comedies, Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday, Beaumont and Fletcher's The Knight of the Burning Pestle, and Massinger's A New Way to Pay Old Debts two tragedies, Webster's The White Devil, and The Duchess of Malfi and Beaumont and Fletcher's romantic drama, Philaster. Each play is presented by a brief note on its history and text, and there is a general Introduction.