Puts canonical texts by Shakespeare and Marlowe into dialogue with plays which are much less well known but which have things to tell us both about the climate of opinion in post-Reformation England and also about the way the early modern stage represented particular locations.

The book discusses the demarcation of secular and sacred territory in early modern English drama. It focuses primarily on four plays, Thorney Abbey, A Knack to Know a Knave, A Shoemaker a Gentleman and The Lovesick King, but puts these in dialogue with Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear and Doctor Faustus.