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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For instance, whereas Harbage took the view that these plays are in the main soberly serious—and Some surely are—many are brightened or sharpened by comic scenes and satire. (Jonson, after all, was still an admired model.) ...
His alleged bowel problem is memorialized in Nedham's satiric The Reverend Alderman Atkins (The Shit-Breech) (1648), Crouch's New-Market-Fayre (1649), and elsewhere. pants because the perimeters within which it was played were 3.
... commentary on religious questions, obscene or blasphemous language, and personal satire of influential people. During the period with which we are concerned, the most important of these probably would have been the first and last, ...
4Concerning Henrician times, John King observes that the “Rediscovery of Plato and Lucian permitted the humanistic revival of the dialogue as a vehicle for philosophical discussion and satire” (285).
And a 1643 satire on the cavaliers that bears a title referring more to its time than to itself (for the work ends positively) is called The Tragedy of the Cruel/Warre. Whatever may be inferred from any of these labels, ...
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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 |