This book aims to provide a reference work on early modern English drama that is more accessible than Alfred Harbage’s still-indispensable Annals of English Drama, 975–1700 (1940; 1964; 1989) or Yoshiko Kawachi’s Calendar of English Renaissance Drama, 1558–1642 (1986). Kiefer pursues this aim through the book’s organization. Harbage and Kawachi organize the information in their works by year and in table form, and Harbage mentions only the first publication and first performance of each play, thereby neglecting print and performance histories. In contrast, Kiefer eschews “difficult-use-tables,” organizes plays alphabetically, and presents a substantial summary of each drama’s print and performance history (xiii). These summaries are not divided into categories or sections; rather, each entry resembles a mini-essay, in which Kiefer presents information such as whether or not the printed play names an author, presents a prologue or epilogue, or features a list of characters, illustrations, or an argument or chorus. The author also covers textual information such as the format in which each play was printed and, where relevant, details about multiple editions and surviving manuscripts. As the author of Shakespeare’s Visual Theatre (2003), Kiefer has a special interest in spectacular theatricality, which enlivens his descriptions of drama; he focuses frequently on theatrical effects elicited by stage directions, dialogue, and dumb shows. The entry for Greene and Lodge’s A Looking Glass for London and England (1587–88?) explains how in this play Jonah is “cast out of the whale’s belly upon the stage.” Kiefer’s account of The Second Maiden’s Tragedy (1611) similarly details the play’s extensive stage directions for action, involving a “toombstone” that “flies open,” a ghost, and a corpse “drest up in black velvet” (343–44, 520–21). It is worth noting that such detailed information about staging and textual history is also available in Martin Wiggins and Catherine Richardson’s British Drama 1533–1642: A Catalogue. Kiefer’s book differs from Wiggins and Richardson’s multi-volume Catalogue in that it is a single volume and covers drama performed and published beyond the closure of the theaters in 1642. While Wiggins and Richardson have space to include extensive information about staging and performance (such as the precise number and type of props used in plays), Kiefer must omit this level of detail. To compress such a huge chronological span into one volume is nonetheless impressive, and it is a pleasure to stumble across accounts of neglected mid-seventeenth-century plays, such as Henry Burkhead’s horrifically violent, royalist drama about Ireland, Cola’s Fury, or Lirenda’s Misery (probably written in 1645–46). Although Kiefer usefully illuminates the cultural significance of post-1642 drama, his book has limitations as an aid to research on drama from specific periods. To locate an entry, readers must know a play’s title—in order to research drama produced in a certain decade or year, it would be necessary to consult Harbage, or Wiggins and Richardson, before tracking down individual entries in Kiefer’s text. This extra level of research might be off-putting for students, who more usually rely on internet searches to gather information about stage and print histories.

By producing a printed reference resource, Kiefer resists the influence of the digital turn in early modern studies. In so doing, he echoes Frances Kirkman, whose seventeenth-century compilation of early modern plays is in part the inspiration for Kiefer’s book. Kirkman, as Kiefer explains, had a sense that “an era had vanished” and that early modern plays “unless they survived in printed form … would be lost to posterity” (xi–xii). In a similar fashion, English Drama from Everyman to 1660 invokes pre-digital modes of scholarship that are increasingly “lost,” especially among students. For ease of use, will students and scholars alike prefer a printed volume to easily searchable and editable online equivalents? This question can be leveled at all printed reference works, but Kiefer’s is perhaps especially vulnerable on this count because it is written with accessibility in mind. These broader questions about the role of printed reference works aside, however, Kiefer’s book succeeds as an accessible resource that students and scholars can keep at hand as a lively aid to learning and research.