Queen Henrietta's Men were one of Caroline London's most important professional playing companies. Between 1626 and 1636, the company performed at the indoor Cockpit Theatre on Drury Lane, under the management of the actor and entrepreneur Christopher Beeston. Over these years, Queen Henrietta's Men grew in stature and reputation to become the leading competitor to the King's Men at the Globe and Blackfriars. The drama that the company offered at the Cockpit makes up a substantial and varied early modern repertory and includes many underexplored plays from the 1630s, alongside more celebrated works written by dramatists including James Shirley and John Ford. The repertory also features a selection of Elizabethan plays alongside Jacobean revivals. This book offers the first extended study of Queen Henrietta's Men, and the first repertory study to focus on Caroline drama. It explores the material and cultural conditions under which the company operated, and offers an account of the dynamics that held between new drama written for the company and the revivals staged alongside that fare. The book gives renewed critical attention to the dramatic contributions of Thomas Heywood and James Shirley in the 1630s, but more broadly offers a rich sense of this particular repertory in performance.

It illustrates the rewards of critical attention to this later period of early modern drama, and illuminates the ways in which an appreciation of the work of Queen Henrietta's Men can offer new perspectives on theatre history and the categories of company and repertory that have shaped it.