ABSTRACT
Catherine Gore, Quid Pro Quo; or, the Day of Dupes (ed. Kate Newey, University of Exeter)
With its exploration of class boundaries and conflicts, mix of genteel and low comic styles, and use of metatheatricality for both comic effect and social comment, Quid Pro Quo is a typical comedy of the period. However, as prizewinner in a competition for “best comedy illustrative of British life and manners of the present day,” the circumstances surrounding the play’s writing and production set it apart from its contemporaries. The play can stimulate discussions of the position of women playwrights in mid-nineteenth-century theatrical culture and of the British debates over the “National Drama” – less a type of play or a place of performance than a site of struggle, constantly redefined against the perceived threat of interlopers.
