The domination of the state over the lives of individuals is, arguably, a problem of the present-day world. In this book, first published in 1971, the author finds essentially the same problem in Jacobean tragedy in the shape it assumed during the rise of the first European nation-states. The English dramatists of the early seventeenth century are seen as giving expression to the ferment of ideas which, only a generation later, precipitated the revolutionary struggles of the sixteen-forties. This title will be of interest to students of History, Literature, Drama and Performance.