The Dramatist and the Received Idea

Dr Sanders'' book grew out of uneasiness over commonly accepted ways of talking about Elizabethan literature. Phrases like ''world picture'' ''received ideas'' are so easily used that we bypass important questions: A picture of whose word? Ideas received by whom? and in what way? The heart of Dr Sanders'' book is a critical account of seven plays by Marlowe and Shakespeare (The Massacre at Paris The Jew of Malta Edward II Dr Faustus Richard II Richard III and Macbeth). In his examination Dr Sanders is at pains to analyse the nature of the intellectual and cultural environment in which the plays were written to define the ways in which this environment influenced Marlowe and Shakespeare and thus to come to a full understanding of the manner in which a work of art can be simultaneously ''of an age'' and ''for all time''.