A discussion of war and militarism in the drama of the 1590s. It demonstrates that plays about war and the "art of war" literature proliferating in the 1590s intervene in the military realities of the last few years of Elizabeth's reign much more closely than is appreciated.

The premise of this work is that plays about war and the "art of war" literature proliferating in the 1590s intervene in the military realities of the last few years of Elizabeth's reign much more closely than is appreciated. The author seeks to reconstruct the particular anxieties which surround the military events of the 1590s through a significant but usually neglected genre, the treatises and manuals of war, in order to deepen understanding of the plays themselves as staged responses to specific wartime conditions. The study re-evaluates the experience, practices and concepts of war by considering them alongside historical events, prescriptive writings and dramatic representations.

Introduction - the brazen throat of war. Part 1 Generals: the real and the ideal - Sutcliffe, Essex
alternative model - Northumberland
Marlowe's "Tamburlaine"
Shakespeare's "Henry V"
commanders in action - Henri IV of France, the Birons and Roger Williams, the siege of Rouen
Chapman's Byron. Part 2 Stratagems of war: strategy
tactics
numbers
arms and the man
rhetoric. Part 3 Camps: watchfulness - "Henry V"
locations - "Caesar and Pompey"
forbidden presences - the women in the two "Tamburlaine" plays. Coda.