ABSTRACT
The terror inspired by the depiction of state-sponsored violence is the predominant, although heretofore neglected, theme of Elkanah Settle’s extensive literary output, which includes scores of plays, poems, and pamphlets. During the turbulent years of the Restoration Stuart kings – Charles II (1660-85) and James II (1685-88) – when English men and women were menaced by the king’s arbitrary power, domestic factionalism, foreign aggression, colonial resistance, and even enslavement, Settle’s focus on psychic and political terror was far from unique. From the printing of Lust’s Dominion, or, the Lascivious Queen (1657), now attributed to Thomas Dekker, to Edward Ravenscroft’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus (1687), the Stuart kings and their subjects alike were instructed in the vicissitudes of terror, their personal security assailed by wrongful deaths, excruciating tortures, and bloody dismemberments. Yet, the staging of terror has few more adroit or prolific champions than Elkanah Settle (1648-1724).
