Renaissance Acting Companies and their Plays explores the intimate and dynamic relationship between acting companies and playwrights in this seminal era in English theatre history, considering some of the key factors shaping the work of contemporary playwrights such as Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, Brome and Heywood. Siobhan Keenan's analysis of this creative collaboration takes in the traditions and workings of contemporary acting companies, playwriting practices, staging and the role of audiences and patrons. Each chapter is illustrated with detailed case studies of individual acting companies and their plays (such as Lady Elizabeth's players, "Beeston's Boys" and the King's Men), as well as thorough analyses of well-known works such as Shakespeare's King Lear and Jonson's The Alchemist and lesser-known plays such as Middleton's The Second Maiden's Tragedy and the anonymous The Valiant Scot. Challenging a prevailing critical emphasis upon the work of individual playwrights, this book argues that we also need to think about the companies for which dramatists wrote and with whose members they collaborated, if we want to fully understand the dramas of the early modern stage. - Back cover.