Introduction: Poetic injustice: some winners and losers in medieval and Renaissance literature -- 'The victim's side': Webster's Duchess of Malfi and Chaucer's Clerk's tale -- 'Of their vain contest': poetic and critical deadlocks in Paradise lost and Spenser's bower of bliss -- 'If this be error': imagination and truth in Shakespeare and Marlowe -- 'Stay, illusion!': Some poetic Godgames.