Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Conventions -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- part i Personal politics -- chapter 1 The culture of early Stuart libelling -- libels in literary culture -- disseminators and collectors -- the poetics of infamy -- chapter 2 Contesting identities: libels and the early Stuart politician -- the arts of degradation -- the politics of the body -- memory and memorialization -- 'the five senses': writing the king's body -- part ii Public politics -- chapter 3 Freeing the tongue and the heart: satire and the political subject -- bitter and witty knaves: satirists at court -- turbulent heads and factious spirits: unauthorized satire in the 1620s -- imagining a public sphere -- chapter 4 Discourses of discrimination: political satire in the 1620s -- the court: politicians and favourites -- political identities: definitions of difference -- our state's a game at cards: representing the political process -- part iii The politics of division -- chapter 5 Satire and sycophancy: Richard Corbett and early Stuart royalism -- the politics and poetics of praise -- the rebellious puritan: satire of division -- the 1630s: constructing caroline royalism -- chapter 6 Stigmatizing Prynne: puritanism and politics in the 1630s -- constructing opposition: the works of bastwick, burton and prynne -- constructing seditious libel: the 1637 trial and its aftermath -- Epilogue Early Stuart satire and the Civil War -- the 1640s: writing without authority -- libelling in print: john taylor and henry walker -- john cleveland: satire of the battlefield -- andrew marvell, 'tom may's death' -- Bibliography -- A. PRIMARY SOURCES -- 1. manuscripts -- 2. printed books -- B. SECONDARY SOURCES -- Index.