ABSTRACT

Readings in Renaissance Women's Drama is the most complete sourcebook for the study of this growing area of inquiry. It brings together, for the first time, a collection of the key critical commentaries and historical essays - both classic and contemporary - on Renaissance women's drama. Specifically designed to provide a comprehensive overview for students, teachers and scholars, this collection combines:
* this century's key critical essays on drama by early modern women by early critics such as Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot
* specially-commissioned new essays by some of today's important feminist critics
* a preface and introduction explaining this selection and contexts of the materials
* a bibliography of secondary sources
Playwrights covered include Joanna Lumley, Elizabeth Cary, Mary Sidney, Mary Wroth and the Cavendish sisters.

chapter |6 pages

INTRODUCTION

part |2 pages

Part I EARLY COMMENTARIES

chapter |1 pages

INTRODUCTION

chapter 5|1 pages

Jonson and Wroth (1640)

chapter 6|7 pages

Elizabeth Cary’s Biography (1643–9)

part |2 pages

Part II CONTEXTS AND ISSUES

chapter |1 pages

INTRODUCTION

chapter 1|15 pages

WOMEN PLAYWRIGHTS IN ENGLAND

Renaissance noblewomen

chapter 3|9 pages

‘MY SEELED CHAMBER AND DARK PARLOUR ROOM’

The English country house and Renaissance women dramatists

chapter 6|8 pages

Women as theatrical investors: three shareholders and the second Fortune Playhouse S.P.CERASANO

Three shareholders and the second Fortune Playhouse

chapter 7|14 pages

‘Why may not a lady write a good play?’: plays by Early Modern women reassessed as performance texts

Plays by Early Modern women reassessed as performance texts.

part |2 pages

Part III EARLY MODERN WOMEN DRAMATISTS

chapter |2 pages

INTRODUCTION

chapter 1|12 pages

‘We princes, I tell you, are set on stages’: Elizabeth I and dramatic self- representation

Elizabeth I and dramatic self-representation

chapter 2|4 pages

Joanna Lumley (1537?-1576/77)

chapter 4|14 pages

‘PATRONESSE OF THE MUSES’

chapter 5|11 pages

MARY HERBERT

Englishing a purified Cleopatra

chapter 6|15 pages

ELIZABETH CARY (1585–1639)

chapter 8|25 pages

RESISTING TYRANTS

Elizabeth Cary’s tragedy

chapter 9|15 pages

AN UNKNOWN CONTINENT

Lady Mary Wroth’s forgotten pastoral drama, ‘Loves Victorie’

chapter 10|12 pages

‘LIKE ONE IN A GAY MASQUE’

The Sidney cousins in the theaters of court and country

chapter 11|13 pages

‘TO BE YOUR DAUGHTER IN YOUR PEN’

The social functions of literature in the writings of Lady Elizabeth Brackley and Lady Jane Cavendish

chapter 12|13 pages

‘SHE GAVE YOU THE CIVILITY OF THE HOUSE’

Household performance in The Concealed Fancies

chapter 13|21 pages

‘MY BRAIN THE STAGE’

Margaret Cavendish and the fantasy of female performance

chapter 14|13 pages

‘A WOMAN WRITE A PLAY!’

Jonsonian strategies and the dramatic writings of Margaret Cavendish; or, did the Duchess feel the anxiety of influence?

chapter |4 pages

CONTRIBUTORS