Pap With an Hatchet ─ An Annotated Modern-Spelling Edition

The first fully annotated, modern-spelling edition of Lyly's Pap with an Hatchet, this volume in the Revels Plays Companion Library series opens a window on the most neglected item in the Lylian canon. A response to a series of late sixteenth-century anti-episcopalian pamphlets issued under the pseudonym 'Martin Marprelate', Pap with an Hatchet seeks to beat Martin at his own game, employing all the devices deployed in the tracts to deride and subvert the Martinist position.

Wholly at odds with the twentieth-century construction of Lyly as an effete writer, ill-at-ease in the hurly-burly of satirical dispute, the work has been largely overlooked by contemporary criticism, yet it affords a host of insights into the range of Lyly's literary accomplishments, the depth of his engagement with the contemporary stage, and the mode and conduct of the pamphlet war itself.

Written in a racy, colloquial style, and at variance in its format with twenty-first century printing conventions, the pamphlet has remained difficult to access for the modern reader, and it is this barrier to a fuller understanding that the present edition has been designed to overcome. Re-edited from the earliest witnesses, brought into line with contemporary printing practice, richly annotated, and equipped with a substantial introduction, it enables a new insight into the witty interaction between the work and the Martinist tracts, the care underlying its composition, and the relish that Lyly brought to his task.

Leah Scragg is an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures at the University of Manchester