David Wiles is Professor of Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has published extensively in the fields of classical and Elizabethan theatre, and his Short History of Western Performance Space was published by Cambridge University Press in 2003. This is his ninth book, and previous books have been shortlisted for the Criticos, Society for Theatre Research and Runciman prizes. He was a contributor to the Oxford Illustrated History of Theatre (1995) and is currently, with Christine Dymkowski, editing The Cambridge Companion to Theatre History. The focus of his teaching and research has always been the relation of theatre to society, particularly in respect of festival, and the present book builds on the breadth of his intellectual interests. Its genesis lies in a keynote lecture which he was invited to give to the International Federation for Theatre Research at the University of Maryland in 2005.