Bluestone, Max, and Rabkin, Norman, eds. Shakespeare's Contemporaries: Modern Studies in English Renaissance Drama. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1970, 411 p.

Presents selected essays focusing on important Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists.

Braunmuller, A. R., and Bulman, J. C, eds. Comedy from Shakespeare to Sheridan: Change and Continuity in the English and European Dramatic Tradition. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1986, 290 p.

Offers an overview of the comic tradition and comic form. Includes essays on Stuart and Caroline comedy, discussing the works of Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Middleton, and Massinger.

Camoin, Françoise André. Jacobean Drama Studies. Vol. 20: The Revenge Convention in Tourneur, Webster and Middleton. Edited by James Hogg. Salzburg, Austria: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, Universität Salzburg, 1972, 141 p.

Examines the moral framework of the revenge motif in Jacobean tragedy, distinguishing its role in Jacobean drama from that in drama of the medieval and Elizabethan periods.

Champion, Larry S. Tragic Patterns in Jacobean and Caroline Drama. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1977, 247 p.

Includes critical discussion of plays by Shakespeare, Jonson, Tourneur, Webster, Middleton, and Ford. Examines how dramatic tragedy "reflects the period of political and philosophical transition."

Charney, Maurice. "Webster vs. Middleton, or the Shakespearean Yardstick in Jacobean Tragedy." In English Renaissance Drama: Essays in Honor of Madeleine Doran & Mark Eccles, edited by Standish Henning, Robert Kimbrough, and Richard Knowles, pp. 118-27. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1976.

Argues against idolatry of Shakespeare and encourages the study of other Jacobean dramatists such as Webster, who, Charney notes, is often unfairly categorized as a "failed Shakespeare."

Dollimore, Jonathan. "Subjectivity, Sexuality, and Transgression: The Jacobean Connection." In Renaissance Drama and Cultural Change, edited by Mary Beth Rose, pp. 53-77. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1986.

Discusses Renaissance gender ideology and conceptions of social identity, using examples from drama of the Jacobean period.

Goldberg, Jonathan. James I and the Politics of Literature: Jonson, Shakespeare, Donne, and Their Contemporaries. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983, 292 p.

Examines the relationship between the reign of James I and literature during the Jacobean period. Chapters include "The Poet-King," "The Royal Masque: Ideology and Writing," and "Fatherly Authority: Politics of the Family."

Mullany, Peter F. Jacobean Drama Studies, Vol. 41: Religion and the Artifice of Jacobean and Caroline Drama. Edited by Dr. James Hogg. Salzburg, Austria: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, 1977, 184 p.

Argues that "religion comes increasingly to be used during the Jacobean and Caroline periods as a dramatic counter eliciting emotional responses and providing theatrical excitement in a manner analyogous to Beaumont and Fletcher's tragicomedies."

Pearson, Jacqueline. '"Beginning Mournfully and Ending Merrily' The Development of Jacobean Tragedy." In Tragedy and Tragicomedy in the Plays of John Webster, pp. 20-39. Barnes & Noble Books, 1980.

Examines the works of several Jacobean dramatists, arguing that Jacobean tragicomedy reveals a moral commentary surpassing the simple goal of audience entertainment. The critic comments: "Behind the clearcut structure of sharp contrasts, surprise and suspense, lurks a teasing double-vision, a critical ability to see events simultaneously in very different ways."

Ribner, Irving. In an introduction to Jacobean Tragedy: The Quest for Moral Order, pp. 1-18. Barnes & Noble Inc., 1962.

Argues that Jacobean tragedy "reflects the uncertainty of an age no longer able to believe in the old ideals, searching almost frantically for new ones to replace them, but incapable yet of finding them."

Wilson, F. P. "Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama." In Elizabethan Drama: Modern Essays in Criticism, edited by R. J. Kaufmann, pp. 3-21. New York: Oxford University Press, 1961.

Argues that Tourneur, Webster, and Middleton come nearest to Shakespeare in "seriousness of purpose, in moral imagination, and in the gift of compression by which a line becomes taut with meaning."