Standard theatre history accounts tend to assume that plays were received in the order in which they were first performed, but playgoers were not bound to watch plays chronologically. Considering Marlowe’s influential Tamburlaine plays, the chapter asks what happens when playgoers watch plays out of the expected order. While there is clear evidence that Tamburlaine had cultural cachet at this time, it does not follow, as is generally assumed, that all audience members would have encountered Tamburlaine before other, related plays.

This chapter examines the latticework of links between Shakespeare and Spenser, telling a tale of two writers. One goes to London to become poet and playwright, the other to Dublin with dreams of a dramatic career, where he finds his theatre of worldlings is a theatre of war. If Spenser’s influence on Shakespeare, especially early Shakespeare, is seldom discussed, Shakespeare’s influence on Spenser remains an even more neglected topic. Spenser is crucial here, since that poet’s Irish residence necessitates a broadening of horizons, and he is viewed as part of a recognizable circle. Shakespeare, a lifelong co-author and collaborator influenced by several of Spenser’s Irish contemporaries, is too often viewed in isolation. From the Spenser–Harvey correspondence and the early histories onwards, this study tracks the collaborative underpinnings of both writers’ work, charting their influences from a shared reliance on Holinshed to a common concern with innovation in form and genre.

Arden of Faversham contains an unusual number of characters, both main and minor, who tell stories. The main storyteller, Franklin, is the play’s only fictitious character – one who has affinities with another story–teller of the same name in a collection of tales, Chaucer’s Franklin. This essay argues that the authors of Arden use the story-telling characters to explore the function of narrative within drama.