The Verse Dramas of Michael Field

This first-ever sustained study of Michael Field's verse dramas restores their central place in the history of Decadent and Modernist theater. Organized into four sections – genre, queer time and space, dramatic affect, and modernist interventions – it traces the development and historical and literary significance of Field's plays. Essays combine literary criticism, theater history, and queer theory to examine formal innovation, performance, and authorship. Contributions also engage underexamined and unpublished works, expanding the archive and opening new directions for research. Plays are situated within broader literary and theatrical contexts, including connections to contemporaries such as Oscar Wilde and W. B. Yeats and the development of the genre by T. S. Eliot and Gordon Bottomley. This is an essential collection for scholars and researchers of late-Victorian and Modernist literatures, theater studies, and queer studies alike.