ABSTRACT
In 1764 Frances Sheridan, who had established a reputation as a novelist and a playwright, set to work on a comedy referred to as A Trip to Bath as well as A Journey to Bath. The two dramatists' joint effort, produced by Rough Magic Theatre Company, was premiered in April 1999 under the title of The Whisperers, and with the specification that this was 'Frances Sheridan's A Trip to Bath as completed by Elizabeth Kuti'. As has been the case with several writers in the past two decades, Kuti was initially drawn to Restoration comedy because of its penetrating insight into matrimonial/patrimonial relations and frank acknowledgement of the sex/money nexus. Throughout The Whisperers, Elizabeth Kuti playfully casts herself as a plagiarist, mixing her voice with that of her collaborator and deliberately blurring the contours of authorial identities. Postmodernity releases gender-orientated reassessments of traditional culture from essentialism, while situated readership proves capable of instilling political meaning into the postmodern paradigm.
