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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The fact is that the 1642 proclamation against stage-playing, whatever else it did, also acknowledged *That it appears useful, even necessary, to do so is all the more remarkable when one realizes that as long ago as 1934 Louis B.
... appear not merely in the chapter devoted to tragedy (chapter 13), where a hurried reaper might expect to harvest them, but also in “Arms and the Men” (chapter 5), “The Famous Tragedy of Charles I” (chapter 6), “Anglo-Tyrannus” ...
Ironically, therefore, the rhetorical mode that once appears to have strengthened both England's throne and the pride of its people almost certainly served later to broaden the gap between Charles and his people.
It appears that in 1640 (or maybe 1641) they could have read in a pamphlet called Vox Borealis—probably by Richard Overton—about “a lamentable Tragedie, acted by the Prelacie, against the poore Players of the Fortune Play-house” (B2r).
As would continue to be true of most of the tragedies written in the years just after it, in fact, The Cardinal appears to achieve a broader significance and deeper seriousness precisely because it touches upon issues of the day.
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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 |