Examines dramatic acts of nostalgia as rhetorical moves designed to precipitate future actionOffers sophisticated readings of literary religious and political texts alongside Shakespeare s works to show how he develops his own use of nostalgia and how that use influences his contemporariesProposes new interpretations of how the history plays of Shakespeare s contemporaries e g The Queen s Men Marlowe influenced his own dramaProvides case studies offering new revelatory readings of 2 Henry VI Richard II Julius Caesar as well as discussions of Henry V King John and moreSuggests new ways to analyse and comprehend the structure of desire that is nostalgiaDiverging from critical paths that have focused on nostalgia as a memorializing practice or on Stuart nostalgia for Elizabeth this book argues that Shakespeare s Elizabethan history plays stage nostalgia as a future focused political rhetoric In doing so the book suggests new directions for studying nostalgia Case studies including Richard II and Julius Caesar demonstrate how Shakespeare creates a dramatic argument for nostalgia s power and possibility even as he represents the fruitlessness of trying to reclaim the past and the fiction of that past s ideal nature In his dramaturgy nostalgia functions as a persuasive call for short lived political change The book provides new interpretations of Shakespeare s contemporaries to illustrate how his use of nostalgia depends on innovates from and influences his fellow playwrights By reading literary religious and political texts alongside Shakespeare s histories this book attends additionally to the extra dramatic valences nostalgic rhetoric obtains in Elizabethan England