Annual collection of articles by leading scholars on aspects of Renaissance life and literature. Renaissance Papers collects the best scholarly essays submitted each year to the Southeastern Renaissance Conference. This volume offers a selection of the most important papers presented at the 1996 Southeastern Renaissance Conference, held at Duke University. Articles, from some of the most distinguished scholars in the field, cover literary representations of the plague; aspects of the Reformation, from the economics of its operation to popular religion; black women characters in early renaissance literature; Hamlet and King Lear; James I's homosexuality; Drayton's 'Ballad of Agincourt'; and secular and religious elements in Herbert's poetry.