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 81
... readers' intellectual systems or capabilities. There can be no doubt that English dramatic writings during the time ... reading their time. Conversely, it is necessary to read their time in other kinds of documents in order to understand ...
... reading the ... letters, imprinted in his face, that some made them to spell the guiltiness of the Sufferer, but others the cruelty of the Imposer” (Church-History Bk. 11, p. 155; see figure 1). Differences among readers are inevitable ...
... reader can always reread. The "Thomas Rymer, writing late in the century, expressed what may be the most extreme ... reading audience of The Famous Tragedie of King Charles I IO W H N T E R F R U I T.
... readers of the Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher folio (1647), offers a wry variation on the venerable comparison of stage and life, then tries to put on a happy face: “And now Reader in this Tragicall Age where the Theater hath been ...
... reading of plays (831-36,928–31).” Whatever reasons they had, readers continued to buy plays even during the grimmest years of the century. Then or now, we all know, a book bought is not necessarily a book read, and from the disputes 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 |