From public theater performed on pageant wagons paraded through city streets to illicit theater staged on tennis courts at private estates, in this course we will study a broad range of early modern plays and entertainments with a focus on the actual conditions under which these plays were staged in the period. We will cover five major periods in English literary history: late medieval (mystery and pageant plays), Renaissance (Shakespeare, Beaumont, Jonson, Brome), Civil War (Davenant, Shirley), Restoration (Behn, Dryden, Congreve), and eighteenth century (Centlivre, Addison, Fielding). Drawing from both primary documents and recent historical studies, as well as from the evidence of the play text itself, for each play we read we will also look at questions about where that play was first staged, how it was performed, and what sort of responses audience members may have had or were expected to have based on the culture of the time. Overall, this course will provide a general survey of early modern social, political, cultural, and literary history as well as a focused, practical approach to thinking about these plays in the context of how early modern audiences may have originally encountered them.