Introduction: The politics of printed drama in 1650s Britain
Chapter 1. The ambivalent political messaging of royalist drama, 1649-1650
Chapter 2. Poetics as political policy: The republic's early response to royalist drama, 1649-1651
Chapter 3. "A floating unbalanced people": Drama and the instability of the republican state, 1651-1653
Chapter 4. They "always speak things as they would have them": The failures of aspirational royalist drama, 1651-16531
Chapter 5. Royalist drama, the legitimacy of authority, and social and political unrest in the mid-1650s
Chapter 6. Republics and ethics: The moral probity of protectoral entertainments, 1653-1658
Conclusion: The hijacking of republican poetics.