ABSTRACT
The drama and theatre of the women’s suffrage movement is important because it was the first attempt to harness the art of theatre to a specific political agenda. The suffrage drama began perhaps with Elizabeth Robins’s Votes for Women , performed at the Court Theatre in April 1907. In 1907 the women set up their own Parliament in Caxton House and began publishing their own journal, Votes for Women , but the following year the anti-suffrage Henry Asquith became Prime Minister. The suffragettes, as the militants of the WSPU were now called, attempted to rush Parliament, many were arrested and Mrs Pankhurst herself was sent to gaol. Diana of Dobson’s is a comedy which questions the economic options available to a woman and sees marriage as a trade. Elizabeth Baker’s Chains takes an even bleaker view of the compromises of marriage.
