Winter Fruit: English Drama, 1642-1660University Press of Kentucky, 2014 M10 17 - 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. 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
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... Davenant. The library of Walter Rea is said to have contained “a good sprinkling of poems, plays and Roman Catholic Literature” (Lawler 20). And whether he bought the books or borrowed them, John Cotgrave somehow managed to mine about ...
... (Davenant's Britannia Triumphans) “for his own praise, upon that day, which by Divine Institution was set apart for the praise of our Redeemer” (13–14, 25). And after Charles was beheaded, at least one writer was moved to write of the ...
... Davenant's great masque called Salmacida Spolia conveyed the official royal image. Whatever “malicious Fury” (B1 r) might threaten, Davenant writes, the land will be guided by “a secret power,” namely, the wisdom of Philogenes (“Lover ...
... Davenant points out in his introduction, Salmacida Spolia takes its theme mainly from two ancient sources. The first concerns the fountain of Salmacis, which reduced fierce and cruel barbarians to the Sweetness of Grecian ways, and the ...
... by raising a troop of horse arrayed in more-pretty-thanpractical scarlet and white.) There were probably also some barbs for William Davenant as Court-Wit. Martin Butler's analysis goes much further 26 W I N T E R F R U I T.
Contents
1 | |
16 | |
37 | |
51 | |
66 | |
6 The Famous Tragedy of Charles I | 95 |
7 AngloTyrannus | 117 |
8 Shows Motions and Drolls | 140 |
12 Fruits of Seasons Gone | 229 |
13 Tragedies | 248 |
14 Comedies | 275 |
15 The Cavendish Phenomenon | 313 |
16 Tragicomedies | 337 |
17 The Rising Sun | 368 |
Appendixes | 381 |
Works Cited | 391 |
9 Mungrell Masques and Their Kin | 157 |
10 The Persistence of Pastoral | 184 |
11 The Craft of Translation | 208 |
Index | 421 |