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In spite of the ephemeral nature of performed drama, playwrights such as Marlowe, Jonson, Webster, Fletcher, and Shakespeare were deeply interested in the endurance of their theatrical work and in their own literary immortality. This book re-evaluates the relationship between these early modern dramatists and literary posterity by considering their work within the context of post-Reformation memorialization. Providing fresh analyses of plays by major dramatists, Brian Chalk considers how they depicted monuments and other funeral properties on stage in order to exploit and criticize the rich ambiguities of commemorative rituals. The book also discusses the print history of the plays featured. The subject will attract scholars and upper-level students of Renaissance drama, memory studies, early modern theatre, and print history.

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This essay explores how, in his Roman tragedy Sejanus, Ben Jonson adapts a Roman sense of monumentality to his own literary project in order to assuage the tension between his immortalizing ambitions and the transitory nature of the medium for which he writes. By reading Sejanus in the context of the growing Jacobean interest in and revision of Roman modes of monumentality, as well as in the context of Jonson's investment in his lasting legacy, I argue that the play provides a textual monument to his conception of his artistic identity.

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