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
... young miss in Aston Cokayne's Obstimate Lady (1657) who squanders so much of her time reading plays (B41). And of course some writers were worried about the weakness of the stronger sex. Henry Edmundson believed that “the feeding of ...
... the events of the time, the broad stream of history is less apparent than the swirls and eddies and the occasional whirlpool” (61–62). intended to represent one or more of the disaffected young T H E S U N D E C L I N E N G I9.
... young noblemen who openly criticized the pacification of Berwick” on 18 June 1639 (Suckling 2:289).6 Having arrived at conjugal happiness with Henrietta Maria only after weathering several stormy years in the 1620s, and having dismissed ...
... young Gentlemen, that used to feast and frolick ... at Tavernes” (6). We find it in the words of Edmund Gayton, who recorded in 1654 how interested auditors might invite actors to repeat their scenes in taverns (Pleasant Notes 140–41) ...
... young folk in disguise. The whole thing moves with brisk, cheerful confidence and simultaneously manages to pose thought-provoking questions about governance, civil strife, escapism, human kindness, treatment of the poor, and the nature ...
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 |