Cover; Half title; Title; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; List of Figures; List of Tables; Acknowledgements; Note on Texts; Introduction; 1 Methods; 2 Prose and Verse: Sometimes 'transparent', Sometimes Meeting with 'a jolt'; 3 Sisters under the Skin: Character and Style; 4 Stage Properties: Bed, Blood, and Beyond; 5 'Novelty carries it away': Cultural Drift; 6 Authorship, Company Style, and horror vacui; 7 Restoration Plays and 'the Giant Race, before the Flood'; Coda; Appendix A: Play-Texts in the Full Corpus

Appendix B: Characters with e 2,000 Words of Dialogue from 243 Plays Performed on the Commercial Stage, 1580-1642Appendix C: Plays First Appearing on the Commercial Stage 1590-1609, with Totals for Prop-Types and Lines Spoken; Appendix D: Distribution of 691 Prop-Types across 160 Plays First Appearing on the Commercial Stage, 1590-1609; Appendix E: A List of 221 Function Words; Works Cited; Index