1. For an excellent recent discussion of the debate over the closing of the theaters, see David Scott Kastan’s “‘Tublike Sports’ and Tublike Calamaties’: Plays, Playing, and Politics,” in Shakespeare After Theory ( New York and London: Routledge, 1999 ), 201–20.
2. On this point, see Michael Neill, “ ‘Wits most accomplished Senate’: The Audience of the Caroline Private Theaters,” Studies in English Literature 18 (1978): 341–60.
3. There is a healthy (if somewhat scattered) critical tradition that has periodically labored against this dismissal, including the work of the following scholars, who have deeply influenced our own thinking on the subject: Martin Butler, Theatre and Crisis, 1632–1642 ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984 )
4. Julie Sanders, Caroline Drama: The Plays of Massinger, Ford, Shirley, and Brome ( Plymouth: Northcote House, 1999 )
5. Ira Clark, The Moral Art of Philip Massinger ( London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1993 )