RESTORATION WOMENS DRAMA FOUR PLAYS 16

This anthology of four plays written or performed between 1662 and 1677 offers a unique snapshot of the diverse nature of Restoration drama by women. 

Restoration Women’s Drama collects four Restoration plays by women: the highly acclaimed Katherine Philips, the successful professional Aphra Behn, the confidently original Margaret Cavendish, and the obscure pioneer Frances Boothby. This anthology includes Behn’s only tragedy as well as the first printed edition of Boothby’s Marcelia, the first play by a woman to be professionally staged in London, demonstrating the range of early modern drama produced by women in this period. An excellent introduction, it is poised to stimulate new discussions of women’s authorship, theatrical knowledge, and literary affinities. Each play has been edited afresh, and each has been modernized and annotated to facilitate reading, teaching, and performance possibilities.

Aphra Behn (1640–89) was the most prolific female playwright of the Restoration and the first Englishwoman to make a living as a professional writer. Best known for her 1677 comedy The Rover and for Oroonoko, her 1688 novella of Atlantic slavery, she also published lyric poetry and translations from works in Latin and French. Abdelazer, her only tragedy, draws from existing early modern treatments of stage Moors, and offers a blend of received notions about black masculinity with a portrait of besieged royalty.

Frances Boothby is known only by her play, Marcelia, and by a poem lamenting its apparent lack of success on the stage. However, Marcelia displays high levels of theatrical skill, and in 1669 her play was the first professional production by a woman on the London stage.

Margaret Cavendish (1623–73) was a prolific author of poetry, prose fiction, letters, essays, natural philosophy, and plays. As a young woman, Cavendish was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Henrietta Maria. During the English Civil War, she accompanied the Queen to Paris where she married the prominent royalist general William Cavendish, the Duke of Newcastle with whom she lived in exile until the Restoration of Charles II. Cavendish sought fame through her writing and used the medium of print to comment on the most pressing cultural, political, and philosophical issues of her day.

Katherine Philips (1632–64) was a celebrated writer in her own time, a central figure in a literary coterie who was known by her coterie name Orinda. Her poetry ranged from poems addressed to her close female friends to those expressing her royalist sympathies. Pompey, her translation of Pierre Corneille’s La Mort de Pompée, was supported by prominent political figures in Ireland and successfully produced in Dublin. It was published in both Dublin and London and was featured in the posthumously published folio edition of her works.

Lara Dodds is professor and head in the department of English at Mississippi State University. Her most recent book, coauthored with Michelle M. Dowd, is Early Modern Women’s Writing and the Future of Literary History.