Winter Fruit: English Drama, 1642-1660Probably 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. |
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... page of Ben Jonson's Worées (1616) The crown and the rising sun as medallic images of Charles II Cromwell's head on a pole 265 279 282 298 301 304 315 325 333 335 340 341 372 373 PREFACE ... this Mad, Sad, Cold Winter of discontent.
Though I did, indeed, choose a similar approach in the earlier 1970s in my own book on Jonson, such scholars have helped to reassure me of the interest and validity of pursuing an historico-literary course. Since one early reader of the ...
In The Gypsies Metamorphos'd (1621) Ben Jonson not only cheerily displayed the taking ways of George Villiers and his gypsy entourage but also had Williers assure King James that he was James the Just. Jonson had earlier put the ...
(Jonson, after all, was still an admired model.) Of even greater consequence—and this will be a major theme here—the plays are far richer than Harbage acknowledges in both kind and quantity of allusions to their times.
Had Ben Jonson lived five years longer, he might have raised a brimming cup to the triumph of textuality over theatricality. Of course, a totally opposite and non-Jonsonian view is also possible. Richard Baker wrote that “a Play read, ...
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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 |
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Bibliographic information
| Title | Winter Fruit: English Drama, 1642-1660 |
| Author | Dale B.J. Randall |
| Publisher | University Press of Kentucky, 2014 |
| ISBN | 0813157706, 9780813157702 |
| Length | 472 pages |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |