"This timely collection of essays by a range of literary and cultural historians deftly explores the multivalent and sometimes conflictive uses of violence in early modern England - a period for which violence was a natural but by no means a transparent form of social expression. Early modern violence spoke volumes but the particular story any one act of violence ... Read moremight tell depended on its various agents, participants, and audience living the historical moment. One ringing refrain of this volume, however, is that violence more often than not told the story of 'the tenuous nature of patriarchal authority in early modern England.'" - Patricia Fumerton, Professor and Director, English Broadside Ballad Archive, Department of English, University of California-Santa Barbara Show Less