Surveillance, Militarism and Drama in the Elizabethan Era ISBN: 9780230373020 Platform/Publisher: SpringerLink / Palgrave Macmillan UK Digital rights:Users: unlimited; Printing: unlimited; Download: unlimited Subjects: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies Collection;
Curtis Breight challenges the view that Renaissance English rulers could not dominate their domestic population. He argues, alternatively, that the Elizabethan state was controlled by the Cecilian faction, which maintained power by focusing English energies outwardly. Cecilians launched relentless assaults by land and sea against England's neighbours. By the 1590s their policies had enriched a few yet destroyed countless people, and this book reads the drama of Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare in relation to ongoing national and international conflict.