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 1-5 of 83
... scene in a play—whether or not there was a kernel in the shell. “At the same time that the Scots were coming to the King,” Ludlow writes, “Commissioners were also sent to him by the Parliament with offers of a personal treaty, on ...
... scenes and satire. (Jonson, after all, was still an admired model.) Of even greater consequence—and this will be a major theme here—the plays are far richer than Harbage acknowledges in both kind and quantity of allusions to their times ...
... Scenes, the Habits, and Names of the Actors” (A3r). Whatever reasons they may have had, the fact is that some midcentury playwrights did begin to include more stage directions than had been customary in earlier years. It is a fact also ...
... scenes, prologue and chorus.9An essential fact for clarifying all of these data is that throughout the long years of wrangling about drama, it was not the play but the player that drew the heavy fire. Hence in his Histrio-mastix we find ...
... scene is Smyrna, both title and play clearly allude to a “languishing Island” (A2v) many hundreds of miles to the west. Apparently the work was so pointedly timely and telling as to call for five or perhaps even six editions.” By means ...
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 |