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
Results 6-10 of 88
... present chapter. To a greater degree than usual with creative works, many of these dramatic writings would remain inert and puzzling if we did not know something—and the more the better—about their cultural context. The more we learn ...
... present book differs so markedly from its predecessor, Alfred Harbage's ambitious and erudite Cavalier Drama (1936).5 Confronted with a mountain of complex and conflicting data, Professor Harbage accomplished a great deal. Unfortunately ...
... present book does, for an approach that is culturally contextual has a number of implications. Among them, and so important and obvious that one might overlook it, is a factor that both limited and freed the playwrights themselves ...
... present study is large, some kind of taxonomy is necessary to confront them. The major approach here will be in chapters that are shaped so as to emphasize either the actualization of various dramatic genres or the impingement of ...
... present a basically true and potentially unsettling image of Charles's cultural and political views." Students of the period have been assiduous in trying to gauge the distance between the monarchs and their people (the questions of ...
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 |