ABSTRACT
It is virtually a commonplace of modern Cavendish studies to say that the Duchess of Newcastle’s works draw upon a wide variety of rhetorical strategies to make manifest her often contradictory self representation as a woman, as a writer, as a Royalist, and as a philosopher. At once painfully shy and theatrically flamboyant, adamant in proclaiming her virtuous modesty and equally forthright m claiming credit for her own achievements, Margaret Cavendish presents her public with paradoxical authorial personae that blur the conventional boundaries between public and private agency. Her efforts as a playwright, in particular, seem to embody this often confusing mixture of advancement and retreat. Her two volumes of plays, with their extensive stage directions, elaborate set descriptions, and striking female characters, participate actively in the world of theatre in a way in which very few Englishwomen before her had endeavoured. However, their status as so-called ‘closet drama’ , published in expensive folio collections and preceded by protestations of never having been intended for onstage performance, appears to recant this bold gesture. Her prefatory epistles T o the Readers’ make profuse apologies for the flaws of her plays (calling them ‘dull dead statues, which is the reason [she claims] I send them forth to be printed, rather than keep them
concealed in hopes to have them first Acted’ 1). At the same time, they boldly announce their deviation from contemporary conventions: ‘and as for the niceties of Rules, Forms, and Terms [she asserts], I renounce, and protest, that if I did understand and know them strictly, as I do not, I would not follow them: and if any dislike my writings for want of those Rules, Forms, and Terms, let them not read them, for I had rather my writings should be unread than be read by such Pedantical Scholastical persons’ (1662, sig.A4v). This multiple process of self-presentation, it has been argued, allows Cavendish to lay claim to the realm of ‘fancy’ , of imaginative creativity, as a means of legitimate feminine self-expression: The Duchess, not finding her dreams flesh, could at teast give them substance on paper’, Linda Payne argues, and Susan Wiseman has compellingly discussed Cavendish’ s ‘idea of the uses of theatre as a locus for the staging of an ideal self.2
