ABSTRACT
Iyengar and Warner reproduce excerpts from the extensive writing about the theatre published by Margaret Lucas Cavendish (c.1623–1673), Duchess of Newcastle, the first English woman playwright to publish openly under her own name, and author of some twenty plays during England's Interregnum (1649–1660) and Restoration (1660–1666). Cavendish outlined in her Sociable Letters (1664), in her science fiction novel The Blazing World (1666), in the many “Prefaces” she added to her published plays (1662 and 1668), and in her “Oration on Plays and Players” (1662) a consistent theory of theatre, argue Iyengar and Warner. They suggest that Cavendish advocated a larger purpose and function for theatre and actors in society; for imaginative and innovative theatrical construction, beyond the Neoclassical “Unities” of time, place, and action that were in vogue during her time; and for the professionalized training of actors in voice and movement. In addition, these extracts confirm that Cavendish anticipated, as James Fitzmaurice has observed (2006), a Keatsian “negative capability” in attributing to Shakespeare the ability to enter the minds, speech, and bodies of his characters.
