Overview
In Environmental Degradation in Jacobean Drama, Bruce Boehrer provides
the first general history of the Shakespearean stage to focus primarily
on ecological issues. Early modern English drama was conditioned by the
environmental events of the cities and landscapes within which it
developed. Boehrer introduces Jacobean London as the first modern
European metropolis in an England beset by problems of overpopulation;
depletion of resources and species; land, water and air pollution;
disease and other health-related issues; and associated changes in
social behavior and cultural output. In six chapters he discusses the
work of the most productive and influential playwrights of the day:
Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, Fletcher, Dekker and Heywood, exploring
the strategies by which they made sense of radical ecological change in
their drama. In the process, Boehrer sketches out these playwrights'
differing responses to environmental issues and traces their legacy for
later literary formulations of green consciousness.