‘Making a Spectacle’: Margaret Cavendish and the Staging of the Self

In Mary Russo’s work on women and carnival theory, she asks, ‘in what sense can women really produce or make spectacles out of themselves’? ¹ This is a particularly suggestive question when used to consider the life and work of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. At a time when women writers were supposed to present themselves as modest and unassertive, Cavendish deliberately presented herself as ambitious for fame and glory. She was a prolific dramatist whose plays were collected into two volumes, published in 1662 and 1668, although these probably remained unperformed during her lifetime. Intriguingly, any play produced from the first volume would have made her the first female dramatist on the English professional stage, preceding Katherine Philips’s adaptation Pompey by a year, Frances Boothby’s Marcelia by seven years, and Aphra Behn’s first play The Forc’d Marriage by eight years. ² Regardless of whether these were performed or closet plays, however, these plays evince an almost obsessive concern with female spectacle and display, whilst the staging of Cavendish’s own body also created a theatrical context in which her plays could be read.