The book explores a series of real stories written by children between the ages of five and fifteen, and traces the growth of literary consciousness from the dawn of written narrative in the kindergarten, through the early years of schooling and on into adolescence.

How did dramatists engage with the unprecedented levels of socio-cultural and intellectual change in Renaissance England, a time when ideas of identity, sexuality, social order, religion and state power were in flux? The book provides a contextual introduction to the work of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, Dekker, Webster, Middleton and Ford.