Closet Drama in Early Modern England

Theatre Without a Stage
Herausgeber: Lemercier-Goddard, Sophie; Griffin, Aurélie

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

A collection of critical scholarship on early modern closet plays performed in private non-playhouse settings between 1560 and 1670. Capturing a lively period of performance, this volume covers textual history, women's writing and contemporary staging. Scholars highlight the radical choices made by playwrights who were actively seeking to create a new theatre, distinct from the characteristics of the public stage. Studying a wide array of plays from 1560 to 1670, the book interrogates the role of women writers in the development of closet drama, early modern racialisation, translation and the circulation of particular motifs across the Channel. It pays close attention to Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedy of Mariam as a proto-feminist play that remains popular with teachers and directors. Contemporary performances of early modern closet plays such as Cleopatra, The Tragedy of Mariam, and Love's Victory are discussed through interviews with scholars involved in performance revivals. By offering an extensive and detailed exploration of closet drama readers are invited to rethink early modern theatre as a whole by looking beyond the public-private divide.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury Academic
• Seitenzahl: 256
• Erscheinungstermin: 21. August 2025
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 216mm x 138mm x 25mm
• Gewicht: 454g
• ISBN-13: 9781350455030
• ISBN-10: 1350455032
• Artikelnr.: 71243538

Autorenporträt

Aurélie Griffin is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern English Literature, Sorbonne Nouvelle University, France. Sophie Lemercier-Goddard is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern English Literature at the École Normale Supérieure, France.

Inhaltsangabe

List of Illustrations
Contributors
Introduction by Aurélie Griffin (Sorbonne University, France) & Sophie
Lemercier-Goddard, ENS de Lyon, France)
I. Plays for the Page?
1. Periodization, Evidence, and the Non-Performance of Tudor Interludes,
Patrick Durdel (University of Lausanne, France)
2. 'When perform'd / Wil this dull vow be?': George Chapman's Unstaged
Plays, Christine Sukic (University of Reims, France)
II. Systems of Power
3. 'With all the ornaments on earth inrich'd': Power and Imagined
Properties in Mary Sidney and Samuel Daniel's Cleopatra Plays, Daniel
Cadman (Sheffield Hallam University, UK)
4. Race and the Christian Anatomy of Islam in Three Closet Dramas, Nora
Galland (Côte d'Azur University, France)
III. Show and Tell in Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedy of Mariam
5. How to Do Things with Words: Learning and Teaching Rhetorics in The
Tragedy of Mariam, Sophie Lemercier-Goddard (ENS de Lyon) and Aurélie
Griffin (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle)
6. 'Shows and proofs uneven': Evidence, Uncertainty and Women on Trial in
The Tragedy of Mariam, Judith Hudson (Birkbeck College, University of
London, UK)
7. 'All Passion Spent'?: Affective Worlds in Early Modern Closet Drama,
Naya Tsentourou (University of Exeter, UK)
IV. Household Drama in the Cavendish circle
8. '[Our] brain, the stage': Oral and Silent Reading in Margaret
Cavendish's Love's Adventure et The Convent of Pleasure, Line Cottegnies
(Sorbonne Université)
9. Rereading Elizabeth Brackley and Jane Cavendish's The Concealed Fancies
as a Town Comedy, Marion Wynne-Davies (University of Surrey, UK)
V. Staging Closet Drama in the Twenty-First Century
10. Women's Closet Drama and Site-Specific Performances (Jane Lumley's
Tragedy of Iphigenia and Mary Wroth's Love's Victory), Alison Findlay (
Lancaster University, UK),Emma Rucastle (Director, ELART Productions) and
Robert Crighton for the Beyond Shakespeare Podcast
11. Staging Samuel Daniel's Cleopatra (2013) and Elizabeth Cary's The
Tragedy of Mariam (2022): Agency, Embodiment and Female Performance, Yasmin
Arshad (University College London, UK), Emma Whipday (Newcastle University,
UK) and Bethany Mayo (Director, Baltimore Shakespeare Factory) in
Conversation with Aurélie Griffin and Sophie Lemercier-Goddard
Bibliography