Cover -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter I. Mimesis and Experience in the Renaissance -- "The doctrine and invention of the Deuil" -- Imitation, Verisimilitude, and "Exercise" -- Humanitas -- Scienza and Art -- The Laws of Drama -- The Advancement of Verisimilitude -- The Retrieval of the "unwritten poetics" -- Chapter II. Dramatic Theory in the Sixteenth-Century:The Confused Borders of Mimesis, Verisimilitude, and Imagination -- Aristotelian Poetics in Italy and the Inconsistencies of Dramatic Theory -- Questioning Mimesis: English Puritan Objections to Drama -- Early Endeavours of Dramatic Theory in England: The Poetics of Thomas Lodge and Sir Philip Sidney -- Mimesis, Presentation, and Representation -- Chapter III. Subjective Experience on the Stage -- Thought with Dramatic Form: Richard Edwards's Damon and Pithias -- Larger Worlds and Small Worlds -- "Worldmaking" in Drama: The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune -- Chapter IV. "I kindle inward seeds of sense and mind": The Representation of the Self in the Comedies of John Lyly -- "Would he could colour the life with the feature!": Mimesis and Art -- Conventions of Dramatic Characterization: Decorum and Allegory -- The Self in the Renaissance -- Euphuism, Ethos, and Pathos -- Epilogue: A Productive Rupture -- Appendix: Catalogue of plays (In alphabetical order) -- Sources -- Primary Sources -- Secondary Sources -- Name index.