As the popularity of the theater exploded in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, so debates about its effects on audiences grew more and more heated. Shakespeare’s Theater: A Sourcebook brings together in one volume the most significant Elizabethan and Jacobean texts on the theater. They include attacks on the stage by moralists, defenses by actors and playwrights, letters by magistrates, mayors and aldermen of London, and extracts from legislation. Many of these texts are made widely available here for the first time.A general introduction and short prefaces to each piece situate the writers and debates in the literary, social, political, and religious history of the time. Students will also welcome the use of modern spelling and the inclusion of vocabulary glosses and annotation.