Winter Fruit: English Drama, 1642-1660

Front Cover
University Press of Kentucky, 1995 M11 9 - 472 pages

Probably the most blighted period in the history of English drama was the time of the Civil Wars, Commonwealth, and Protectorate. With the theaters closed, the country at war, the throne in fatal decline, and the powers of Parliament and Cromwell growing greater, the received wisdom has been that drama in England largely withered and died.Not so, demonstrates Dale Randall in this magisterial study, the first book in nearly sixty years to attempt a comprehensive analysis of mid-seventeenth-century English drama.

Throughout the official hiatus in playing, he shows, dramas continued to be composed, translated, transmuted, published, bought, read, and even covertly acted. Furthermore, the tendency of drama to become interestingly topical and political grew more pronounced.

In illuminating one of the least understood periods in English literary history, Randall's study not only encompasses a large amount of dramatic and historical material but also takes into account much of the scholarship published in recent decades. Winter Fruit is a major interpretive work in literary and social history.

From inside the book

 

Results 1-3 of 68

Page 20
... wrote at the beginning of the decade : " White Peace ( the beautiful'st of things ) / Seemes here her everlasting rest / To fix " ( " An Ode , " 11. 37-39 , in Shorter Poems ) . So far as Parliament was concerned , Charles really may ...
Page 100
... wrote it or when he testified about it , Buchanan sent down to posterity a play about kingship , religion gone bad , and martyrdom for true religion . Hence its reappearance a century after he wrote it is unsurprising . The anonymous ...
Page 334
... wrote but also published over twenty original plays . Though her sense of humor had less range than her husband's and , con- versely , though some of her work is so expansively protean as to escape the normal boundaries of genre , her ...

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Contents

A Case of Cultural Poetics
1
The Sun Declining
16
Kinds of Closure
37
Copyright

32 other sections not shown

Other editions - View all

Winter Fruit: English Drama, 1642-1660
Dale B. J. Randall
Limited preview
Winter Fruit: English Drama, 1642-1660
Dale B.J. Randall
Limited preview - 2014

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Andromana appears Ben Jonson called cavalier character Charles's Cicero civil claim comedy comic Compton Court Cowley Cromwell Cromwell's Davenant death depicted drama dramatists droll Duke Earl earlier England English Entertainment fact Fane figure Flecknoe Fletcher Folger Shakespeare Library Francis genre hath Henrietta Maria Henry Honoria and Mammon Honour interesting James James Shirley John Jonson Killigrew King Charles King's Lady later Library London Lord Manuche Marcus Tullius Cicero Margaret Cavendish Margaret Lucas Cavendish masque midcentury mind noble observes Oxford pamphlet Parliament pastoral performed perhaps play Playes playwright Poems poet political present Prince printed probably prologue published Queen readers Rebellion Restoration Richard Richard Brome Richard Flecknoe Roundheads royal royalist Rump satire scene Scots Shakespeare Shirley Shirley's soldier speech stage suggest Tatham theaters Thomas Thomas Killigrew tragedy tragicomedy translation tyrant vertue wife Willan William women words writing wrote young

References to this book

About the author (1995)

Dale B.J. Randall is a professor of English and professor of the practice of drama at Duke University and author of several books on early modern English literature.

Bibliographic information

TitleWinter Fruit: English Drama, 1642-1660
AuthorDale B.J. Randall
Editionillustrated
PublisherUniversity Press of Kentucky, 1995
Original fromthe University of Michigan
Digitized4 Mar 2008
ISBN0813119251, 9780813119250
Length472 pages
  
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