George Peele has long been regarded as one of the playwrights who gave significant direction to the rapidly evolving theater which Shakespeare, Jonson, and others inherited. Within the group known as the University Wits--which also includes Thomas Nashe, Robert Greene, John Lyly, and Thomas Lodge--Peele stands alone as a writer of extraordinary variety. Although he is known primarily as the author of the courtly The Arraignment of Paris and the folksy The Old Wives Tale, a number of Peele's other writings deserve attention. He wrote a fair number of university pieces, court entertainments, and occasional verses, as well as biblical and historical drama, which in addition to comedy, pastoral drama, and tragedy identify him as a writer of astonishing range and scope. The works of such writers as Sidney, Lyly, and Marlowe have been given greater attention; but in George Peele we find a writer closer to his...