ABSTRACT
There is no clear evidence of Margaret Cavendish’s plays having had any influence on the dramatic writing of Aphra Behn. Contemporary scholars treat Margaret Cavendish as a separate, unique, eccentric and wholly original woman writer, ahead of her time, claiming no influence and not exerting an influence on the women writers that were to follow her. She did, however, turn her attention and her pen to one of the most social forms of literary culture. Drama not only offered her an opportunity to explore her own vacillating and often contradictory ideas about gender roles but her dramatic writing also demonstrates a theoretical exploration and an understanding of the constraints of the form, that mark these writings as less eccentric or formally independent than critics have conceded to date.
