DOCSLIB.ORG

The Case of John Wilmot's 'Lucina's Rape' Tindemans, Klaas

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Case of John Wilmot's 'Lucina's Rape' Tindemans, Klaas Vrije Universiteit Brussel The Libertine Subversion of the Masque: The Case of John Wilmot's 'Lucina's Rape' Tindemans, Klaas Published in: Magnificence in the Seventeenth Century. DOI: 10.1163/9789004436800_017 Publication date: 2020 License: Unspecified Document Version: Proof Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Tindemans, K. (2020). The Libertine Subversion of the Masque: The Case of John Wilmot's 'Lucina's Rape'. In G. Verstegen, S. Bussels, & W. Melion (Eds.), Magnificence in the Seventeenth Century. : Performing Splendour in Catholic and Protestant Contexts (pp. 328-346). (Intersections; Vol. 72). Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004436800_017 General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 25. Sep. 2021 chapter 15 The Libertine Subversion of the Masque: The Case of John Wilmot’s Lucina’s Rape Klaas Tindemans John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester (1647–1680) was the (in)famous “court wit” – courtier, poet and libertine – of king Charles II during the Restoration era in England. He left a small but exquisite oeuvre of satirical poems, apho- risms, and other more undefinable texts. He wrote two dramatic texts, includ- ing Lucina’s Rape, an adaptation of John Fletcher’s Jacobean revenge tragedy The Tragedy of Valentinian.1 The plot of Fletcher’s play remains more or less the same in Wilmot’s version, but the focus changes significantly. The cruel Roman emperor Valentinian rapes Lucina, the wife of the brave army officer Maximus, and she commits suicide. Maximus carries out a complex plan of revenge, ma- nipulating and abusing his friend Aëcius, an army general of immaculate vir- tue but also unconditionally loyal to the emperor. Maximus is chosen as the new emperor, but he is finally killed, poisoned by Valentinian’s widow. In his adaptation John Wilmot does not focus on the fate of the debaucher- ous Valentinian; rather, rape as an extremely transgressive act, and its context, are his central concerns. The act of rape, taking place offstage, is ‘hidden’ by the noise of a court masque, both visually and musically. And the ending is open, with a dead emperor and a solitary Maximus, whose sole ambition consists in imitating the nihilism of Valentinian.2 In the crucial rape scenes, the iconic magnificence of the court masque, as a genre supposed to glorify a divine and generous kingship, is used to highlight royal hypocrisy in the most violent way. However, given Wilmot’s libertine way of thinking, the play obscures, in a cer- tain way, the moral accountability of this hypocritical attitude, clearly visible in Fletcher’s version – with the exception of his bloody and chaotic ending. Is the materialist conviction of the emperor, his sadistic certainty that na- ture requires both mental and physical (sexual) submission, responsible for his aggression? Or is it Lucina’s idealist chastity, her sublimation of hidden erotic desires ambiguously recognized, only ambiguously acknowledged – a 1 Fletcher J., “The Tragedy of Valentinian”, 1647, available from University of Oxford Text Archive, http://ota.ox.ac.uk/desc/1022 (accessed: 21.7.2019). 2 Combe K., A Martyr for Sin. Rochester’s Critique of Polity, Sexuality, and Society (Newark: 1998). © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004436800_017 Versteegen et al_16-Tindemans.indd 328 6/24/2020 9:30:09 PM LIBERTINE SUBVERSION OF THE MASQUE: WILMOT’S LUCINA’S RAPE 329 seventeenth-century version of ‘blaming the victim’?3 At the end of the seven- teenth century in England, the masque as a performative genre had lost its im- pact. The political reasons are obvious: the reduction of the role of the King in the political power balance, enforced by the English Civil War and enshrined by the Glorious Revolution (1688). But it is tempting to ask whether the decline of the masque, as a genre so identified with magnificence, would equally imply the decline of magnificence as a virtue in itself. This essay focuses on what exactly the ‘clash of theatricalities’, this drama- turgically quite subtle layering of events (especially in the actual rape scenes), is supposed to represent. The official, magnificent theatricality of the court masque, a mainly power-affirmative genre developed during the reigns of the English and Scottish kings James I and Charles I, before 1642, is confronted with royal misdemeanour in a very conspicuous way, thus undermining seri- ously the credibility of the court itself, in particular that of Charles II but per- haps also of royalty in general. This Roman imperial court might indeed be a satirical representation of the court of Charles II, which carried a reputation of debauchery, but that form of critique is perhaps too obvious, even when this reading is attractive.4 The position of Wilmot as the most notorious member of George Villiers’s ‘cabal’ of libertine courtiers adds to the ambiguity of this moralistic dramaturgical choice – moralistic at first sight. It raises dif- ferent questions about the changed function of theatricality under the Restoration regime. More fundamentally, Lucina’s Rape might be symptomatic of the political role libertinism – as an attitude and as a (philosophical) state of mind – played at the moment when English governance moved away from theatrical vehi- cles for declaring its traditional legitimacy, and from staging magnificence as a splendorous display of generosity toward its subjects. The political system, including its (performed) discourse, develops, during the second half of the seventeenth century, in the direction of political, partisan opposition between Tories and Whigs, between attachment to divine kingship and anticipation of a constitutional regime – the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Libertinism ex- poses the ambiguities of this development. Without claiming thoroughly to reinterpret libertine theatricality in the latter years of a superseded regime, I will try to contextualize this revealing situation, wherein ingredients of the 3 Byrne P., “‘Where Appetite Directs’: Tragic Heroism’s Recovery in Rochester’s Valentinian”, Pacific Coast Philology 40 (2005) 158–177. 4 Wilson J.H., “Rochester’s Valentinian and Heroic Sentiment”, English Literary History 4 (1937) 265–273. Versteegen et al_16-Tindemans.indd 329 6/24/2020 9:30:09 PM 330 Tindemans court masque, revenge tragedy, heroic Trauerspiel, and comedy of manners so strangely meet. What kind of ‘structures of feeling’ – patterns of cultural expression not (yet) fixed as a hegemonic (or heterodox) discourse, as Raymond Williams defines this term5 – underlie this particular conspicuousness or spectacularism of po- litical power? Does Wilmot’s equivocally heroic drama imitate or pervert this ‘official’ magnificence, more specifically with the presence of rape, the crux of his dramaturgy? It is by the mimesis of this act, in all its criminal cruelty, that the unperceived and surreptitious relations of power, especially in their affec- tive patterns, are articulated. My attempt to clarify the generic specificity of a drama such as Lucina’s Rape in relation to revenge tragedy and court masque might seem futile or pointless, but it may help to elucidate the typically seventeenth-century relationship – Jacobean (1567–1625) or Caroline (1625–1642) – between politics and spectacle and to redefine this type of magnificence. An overview of the use of rape in seventeenth-century discourse, in political activism and in drama, provides a necessary context for my discussion. In closing, I shall examine the con- nection between this dramaturgical exemplum and libertinism as a political- philosophical way of thinking, a subversion of magnificence as a public virtue. Or to put it differently, the ‘deconstructive’ gesture of Wilmot’s Lucina’s Rape exemplifies how the antique virtue of magnificence, rediscovered in the Renaissance and redefined in the Stuart masque as a complementary relation among outward splendour, generosity of the rich, and the affirmation of sov- ereign legitimacy, loses its cultural (and ethical) cohesion at the dawn of the seventeenth century. 1 Masque and Heroic Drama in the Restoration Is the court masque, as developed under the Stuart dynasty in the early seven- teenth century, an ideological machine comparable to the royal spectacle seen under the reign of the French roi soleil Louis XIV, and thus focused on a de- materialized kingship rooted in divine right? Or was it a performative vehicle meant to contain actual discussions on both the fundamentals and the execu- tion of a slowly secularizing monarchic regime, and thus, to a limited extent, a space for debate and even critique on the balance of power?6 The discussion 5 Williams R., Marxism and Literature (Oxford / New York: 1977) 128–135. 6 Knowles J., Politics and Political Culture in the Court Masque (Houndmills – New York: 2015) 1–3. Versteegen et al_16-Tindemans.indd 330 6/24/2020 9:30:09 PM LIBERTINE SUBVERSION OF THE MASQUE: WILMOT’S LUCINA’S RAPE 331 between historians is ongoing, and the risk with any assessment is the ten- dency to see the glorification of kingship – always present in the masque – from the perspective of later events, catastrophic or not: the English Civil War between 1642 and 1651, the decline of absolute kingship during the Restoration after 1660, the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Dryden on Shadwell's Theatre of Violence
    James Blac k DRYDEN ON SHADWELL'S THEATRE OF VIOLENCE All admirers of J ohn Dryden can sympathise w ith H.T . Swedenberg's dream of o ne day "finding bundle after bundle of Dryden's manuscripts and a journal kept thro ugho ut his career. .. .! turn in the journal to the 1670's and eagerly scan the leaves to find out precisely when MacFlecknoe was written and what the ultimate occasion for it was. " 1 For the truth is that although MacFlecknoe can be provisionally dated 1678 the " ultimate occasion" of Dryden's satire on Thomas Shadwell has never been satisfactorily explained. We know that for abo ut nine years Dryden and Shadwell had been arguing in prologues and prefaces with reasonably good manners , chiefly over the principles of comedy. R.J. Smith makes a case for Shadwell's being considered the foremost among Dryden's many adversaries in literary argumentatio n, and points out that their discourse had reached the stage where Dryden, in A n Apology for Heroic Poetry ( 16 77), made "an appeal for a live-and-let-live agree­ ment." 2 T he generally serious and calm nature of their debate makes MacFlecknoe seem almost a shocking intrusion- a personally-or politically-inspired attack which shattered the calm of discourse. Surely-so the reasoning of commentators goes- there must have been a casus belli. It used to be thought that Dryden was reacting to an attack by Shadwell in The Medal of j ohn Bayes, but this theory has been discounted.3 A.S. Borgman, a Shadwell biographer, would like to be able to account for Dryden's "turning against" Shadwell and making him the butt of MacFlecknoe: Had he wearied of [Sh adwell's) rep eated boasts o f friendship w ith the wits? Had he become disgusted with (h is) arrogant treatment of those who did not applaud th e humours in The Virtuoso and A True Widow? Had he tired of DRYDEN ON SHADWELL'S THEATRE OF VIOLENCE 299 seeing Shadwell "wallow in the pit" and condemn plays? Or did some word or act bring to his mind the former controversy and the threat then made of condemning dulness?4 D.M.
    [Show full text]
  • Restoration Comedy.Pdf
    RESTORATION COMEDY (1660- 1700) For B.A. Honours Part- 1 Paper – 1 (Content compiled for Academic Purpose only from http://www.theatrehistory.com/ and other websites duly credited) Content compiled by- Dr. Amritendu Ghosal Assistant Professor Department of English Anugrah Memorial College Gaya. Email- [email protected] Topics Covered- 1. INTRODUCTION TO THE RESTORATION AGE 2. NATURE OF RESTORATION COMEDY 3. WOMEN PLAYWRIGHTS 4. APPEARANCE OF WOMEN ON THE ENGLISH STAGE 5. PERSISTENCE OF ELIZABETHAN PLAYS 6. PARODY OF HEROIC DRAMA 7. COLLIER'S ATTACK ON THE STAGE (Image from haikudeck.com) "THEN came the gallant protest of the Restoration, when Wycherley and his successors in drama commenced to write of contemporary life in much the spirit of modern musical comedy. A new style of comedy was improvised, which, for lack of a better term, we may agree to call the comedy of Gallantry, and which Etherege, Shadwell, and Davenant, and Crowne, and Wycherley, and divers others, laboured painstakingly to perfect. They probably exercised to the full reach of their powers when they hammered into grossness their too fine witticisms just smuggled out of France, mixed them with additional breaches of decorum, and divided the results into five acts. For Gallantry, it must be repeated, was yet in its crude youth. For Wycherley and his confreres were the first Englishmen to depict mankind as leading an existence with no moral outcome. It was their sorry distinction to be the first of English authors to present a world of unscrupulous persons who entertained no special prejudices, one way or the other, as touched ethical matters." -- JAMES BRANCH CABELL, Beyond Life.
    [Show full text]
  • 6 X 10.Long New.P65
    Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-18865-4 - Gender, Theatre, and the Origins of Criticism: From Dryden to Manley Marcie Frank Index More information Index A Comparison Between the Two Stages, 91–93 criticism, 3, 4, 7, 134–135 A Lady’s New-Years Gift, 112 female genealogy of, 10, 93 Addison, Joseph, 1, 6, 10–12, 18, 60, 89, 96, genealogy of, 11, 137–138 102, 113, 137 historical orientation of, 1, 3, 4, 8, 21–22 and Trotter, 114 impartiality of, 12–13, 14, 16, 64, 81–83, 95, Agnew, Jean-Christophe, 5, 14, 95, 140 111, 113, 131, 134 Anderson, Benedict, 17 self-consciousness of, 112–114 Ariadne theatrical orientation of, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 11, She Ventures, and He Wins, 91 27–32, 43, 102, 125–127 Astell, Mary, 108 Crowne, John, 94–96, 157 Auerbach, Erich, 23, 97 Calisto, 94–96 authorship, female, 3, 10, 91–92, 100, 134–135, 136 Davenant, Sir William, 4, 68 Dennis, John, 58 Backscheider, Paula, 91, 100–101 drama, 1, 3, 91 Baldick, Chris, 137–138 affective tragedy, 73–74 Ballaster, Ros, 12, 113, 117, 129–131 comedies of manners, 55, 61 Barry, Elizabeth, 121, 124–125 French vs. English, 19, 28–30, 38–39 Behn, Aphra, 1–2, 4, 11, 12, 18, 105 heroic play, 4, 73, 121–123 and Dryden, 92, 96–98 masque, 95 See also Crowne, John Calisto criticism by, 93, 96–100 modern vs. ancient, 19, 30–31 Agnes de Castro, 104 rehearsal play, 2–3 Oroonoko, 91 The Critic, or A Tragedy Rehearsed, 3 preface to The Dutch Lover, 96–98 The Rehearsal, 2–3, 121 preface to The Lucky Chance, 96–100 The Rehearsal, or Bayes in Petticoats, 3 The Younger Brother, 91 The Two Queens
    [Show full text]
  • Dryden and Johnson on Shakespeare Nicholas Hudson
    Document generated on 09/26/2021 11:31 p.m. Lumen Selected Proceedings from the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Travaux choisis de la Société canadienne d'étude du dix-huitième siècle The Mystery of Aesthetic Response: Dryden and Johnson on Shakespeare Nicholas Hudson Volume 30, 2011 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1007713ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1007713ar See table of contents Publisher(s) Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies / Société canadienne d'étude du dix-huitième siècle ISSN 1209-3696 (print) 1927-8284 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this article Hudson, N. (2011). The Mystery of Aesthetic Response: Dryden and Johnson on Shakespeare. Lumen, 30, 21–31. https://doi.org/10.7202/1007713ar Copyright © Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies / Société This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit canadienne d'étude du dix-huitième siècle, 2011 (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ The Mystery of Aesthetic Response 21 2. The Mystery of Aesthetic Response: Dryden and Johnson on Shakespeare The year 1678 marked an important and formative moment in the his- tory of Shakespearian criticism. It was in the this year that John Dryden read a copy of Thomas Rymer’s The Tragedies of the Last Age, which the author had sent him.
    [Show full text]
  • The Heroic Tragedy
    The Heroic Tragedy Heroic Tragedy is a name given to the form of tragedy which had some vogue in the beginning of the Restoration period (1660-1700). It was drama in the epic mode – grand, rhetorical and declamatory at its best and often bombastic at its worst. Its themes were love and honour, and it was considerably influenced by French classical drama, especially by the works of Corneille and Racine. John Dryden thus defined it in the preface to The Conquest of Granada (1672) : “ An heroic play ought to be an imitation, in little, of an heroic poem ; and consequently … love and valour ought to be the subject of it”. In these plays, as in an epic, the protagonist is a large-scale warrior whose actions involve the fate of an empire. A noble hero and an equally noble heroine are typically placed in a situation in which their passionate love is in conflict with the demands of honour and with the hero’s patriotic duty to his country. When the conflict ends in a disaster, the effect is a tragedy. Heroic drama was staged in a spectacular and operatic fashion, and in it one can detect the influences of opera which, at this time, was establishing itself. The two main early works of this genre were The Siege of Rhodes (1656) and The Spaniards in Peru (1658) by Sir William Davenant who was virtually the pioneer of English opera and who promoted heroic drama. The main plays thereafter were Robert Howard’s The Indian Queen (1665) and those by Dryden.
    [Show full text]
  • Dryden and Milton
    Dartmouth College Dartmouth Digital Commons Open Dartmouth: Published works by Dartmouth faculty Faculty Work Fall 2017 Heroic Restorations: Dryden and Milton Thomas Luxon [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/facoa Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Dartmouth Digital Commons Citation Luxon, Thomas, "Heroic Restorations: Dryden and Milton" (2017). Open Dartmouth: Published works by Dartmouth faculty. 299. https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/facoa/299 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Work at Dartmouth Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Dartmouth: Published works by Dartmouth faculty by an authorized administrator of Dartmouth Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Heroic Restorations: Dryden and Milton Thomas H. Luxon In his introduction to The Cambridge Companion to John Dryden (2004), Steven Zwicker maintains that “Dryden seldom wrote of, or even seems to have imagined, a coherent and progressive literary career of the kind that was often on Spenser’s or Milton’s mind.”1 In her chapter in the same 2004 Companion, Annabel Patterson offers an important corrective to Zwicker’s characterization of Dryden. Patterson reminds us that in fact he was driven, almost from the beginning of his career, by a “grand ambition”— to redefine “the heroic,” both in subject and in form. She advances the fascinating (and counter-intuitive) thesis that Dryden’s ambition to re-invent English heroic poetry for his age probably also drove his political affiliations. “Most of this has to do, obviously, with Dryden’s idea of the heroic, as something that writers, especially if they have the laureateship in mind, must redefine for their own place and time.”2 I cannot let it go without saying that John Milton was driven, from a very young age, by much the same ambition.
    [Show full text]
  • Spectacular Disappearances: Celebrity and Privacy, 1696-1801
    Revised Pages Spectacular DiSappearanceS Revised Pages Revised Pages Spectacular Disappearances Celebrity and Privacy, 1696– 1801 Julia H. Fawcett University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor Revised Pages Copyright © 2016 by Julia H. Fawcett All rights reserved This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher. Published in the United States of America by the University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid- free paper 2019 2018 2017 2016 4 3 2 1 A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978– 0- 472– 11980– 6 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978– 0- 472– 12180– 9 (e-book) Revised Pages Acknowledgments I have often wondered if my interest in authors who wrote themselves in order to obscure themselves stems from my own anxieties about the permanence of the printed word—m y own longing (that I imagine everyone shares?) for words that linger on the page for a moment only and then— miraculously, mercifully— disappear before their inadequacies can be exposed. I think I will always harbor this anxiety, but I have been blessed with mentors, colleagues, friends, and family members who have known how to couch their criticism in kindness and without whom I could never have summoned the courage to keep this work up or to set these words down. The germs for this book’s ideas began many years ago, when, as an under- graduate at Harvard, I stumbled somewhat accidentally (to fulfill a require- ment) into Lynn Festa’s course on “Sex and Sensibility during the Enlighten- ment.” Thank goodness for requirements.
    [Show full text]
  • William Wycherly's the Gentleman Dancing-Master
    WILLIAM WYCHERLY'S THE GENTLEMAN DANCING-MASTER: A THESIS PRODUCTION FOR THE ARENA STAGE by MARY JEAN THOMAS B. S., Fort Hays Kansas State College, 1955 A THESIS submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree MASTEK OF SCIENCE Department of Speech KANSAS STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND APPLIED SCIENCE 1958 2(j,&f ii ' TH IIS"? c .2_ TABLE OF CONTENTS £)ocurA*>^TS INTRODUCTION 10 RESTORATION COMEDY 1 ANALYSIS OF THE HISTORICAL PERIOD IN WHICH THE PLAY WAS WRITTEN. 9 Reviev; of Important Historical Events Leading to the Restoration ..... ....9 Political, Religious, and Social Atmosphere of England after the Restoration 13 The Author and His Place in Restoration Society 18 THE STAGING OF RESTORATION COMEDIES 21 Theatrical Developments from 1600 to 1660 21 Early Theaters 21 Scenes and Machines 23 The Closing of the Theaters 25 Theatrical Facilities after the Restoration 27 The Theaters 2? Onstage and Backstage 28 Box, Pit, and Gallery 30 Stage History and Criticism of The Gentleman Dancing-Master . .32 PHILOSOPHY AND PROBLEMS OF PRODUCTION J>k Directorial Concept and Approach JM General 3^ Direction 36 Acting 'tO Analysis of the Play ¥* Summary of the Action by Acts ^9 Technical Concept and Approach. 57 General 37 Setting 57 ill Lighting 58 Costuming 61 Problems of Production 64 Description of Scenery and Its Construction 64 Lighting Plots and Effects 69 Description and Construction of Costumes • 70 Properties and Miscellaneous Effects .... 80 Casting, Rehearsals, Special Problems, and Performance . .84 EVALUATION AND CONCLUSIONS 87 BIBLIOGRAPHY 90 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 95 APPENDICES 96 INTRODUCTION TO RESTORATION COMEDI In turning over the pages of the best comedies, we axe almost transported to another world, and escape from this dull age to one that was all life, and whim, and mirth, and humour.
    [Show full text]
  • Performing Belvile: Developing a Transformative Method
    University of Central Florida STARS Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020- 2021 Performing Belvile: Developing a Transformative Method Brian Wiegand University of Central Florida Part of the Acting Commons Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd2020 University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Masters Thesis (Open Access) is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020- by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STARS Citation Wiegand, Brian, "Performing Belvile: Developing a Transformative Method" (2021). Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-. 582. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd2020/582 PERFORMING BELVILE: DEVELOPING A TRANSFORMATIVE METHOD By BRIAN WIEGAND B.F.A Western Michigan University, 2018 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Fine Arts in Acting in the Department of Theatre in the College of Arts & Humanities at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Spring Term 2021 ABSTRACT Learning to act is a difficult process, particularly for a young adult who is still discovering the wide variety of human experiences that make up much of dramatic literature. As an actor in training, I have struggled to play characters whose experiences and given circumstances differ from my own. I am not resistant to this idea, I have, however, come to realize that my own personal habits continue to get in the way of making a full transformation into the inner life of the character. As a result, my characters are often similar to one another, even if these characters exist in different time periods, styles, or genres.
    [Show full text]
  • A Study of the Fop in Residqration Drama 1
    A STUDY OF THE FOP IN RESIDQRATION DRAMA 1 AGRWUL Ti: I' L . , SEP 27 193" A STUDY OF THE FOP IN RESTORATION DRAMA By­ KATHERINE MORONEY 11 Bachelor or Science Oklahoma .Agrioul tural and Meehanioal College .. Stillwater, Oklahoma Submitted to the Department ot English Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College In Partial Fulfillment or the Requirements For the degree or MAST.ER OF ARTS 1938 . '") . .... • • i. .-. -· .,. ' . .' . ' . ., • J . • . .• . .. .: . .. .:.... C: • • ~ • . • • • t • .(,. ..• • . ~ .. .- ~ .. ; .: ; -.= ~ .... 11 ,,, ... 414.._ i APPROVED: Chairman or ihe !iigilsh Department 108568 111 To the Memory ot Nat P. Lawrence Teacher,. Scholar, Friend iy TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF THE 10P Pagel Engli.eh Anoeetors ot the Fop Bis Frenoh Cousins CH.AP?ER II. THE BESTORA'l'I ON FOP Page lV A Oharaot•r ot the !"op His sooial Oharaoter The Fop' a .Intellect CHAPTER III. OONOLUSION Page 60 INTRODUCTION: ORIGIN OF THE FOP English Ancestors£! l!!!, Fop To say that the fop was produced by mutation in seventeenth century literature would claim undue encomiums for the Restoration dramatists. The :fop is the clown, the :rool, the buffoon, the coxcomb of the Restoration stage. He is the man in whom the essence of most or the satire in the play is found in one comical character. However, in earlier comedies ean be found characters showing evidence that they must have influenced his creation enough to be called literary prototypes. "Comedy," wrote Aristotle over two thousand years ago, "is an imitation of characters of a lower type. It consists in some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destruc­ tive."1 For many centuries the comic character was a soeial interpretation of this quotation.
    [Show full text]
  • "A Kind Mistress Is the Good Old Cause": the Gender of the Heir in Marriage À La Mode
    FALL 1990 39 "A Kind Mistress is the Good Old Cause": The Gender of the Heir in Marriage à la Mode Laura Rosenthal In Buckingham's play The Rehearsal, the characters Jonson and Smith witness a new tragicomedy written by "Bayes," a caricature of John Dryden. They watch as a gentleman and a physician reveal the tragicomedy's political intrigue to each other, but hear nothing because the characters communicate by whispers. When the small audience expresses its confusion to the playwright, Bayes answers that "they are suppos'd to be Politicians; and matters of State ought not to be divulg'd" (2.1.69-70). As part of its parody of other Restoration plays, The Rehearsal, as Susan Staves has argued, mocks the political anxiety that followed the Civil War.1 But this play expresses that anxiety as well. The tragicomedy places two kings at the head of its state to whom the people show "the same affections, the same duty, the same obedience" (1.1.236). At one point, the gentleman and the physician draw their swords, sit down on the two thrones, and thus usurp the two kings. "There's now an odd surprize," Bayes comments. "The whole State's turn'd quite topsie- turvy, without any puther or stir in the whole world" (2.4.70-2). A couple of scenes later, the two rightful kings descend from the clouds and the usurpers sneak off-this without any puther or stir either. The plot of The RehearsaPs play-within-the-play identifies, satirizes, and expresses two central anxieties over royal power in the Restoration.
    [Show full text]
  • An Essay of Dramatic Poesy), Para­ Phrasing and Quoting Directly from Corneille's Prefaces That Lay Open on the Desk
    DRYDEN 169 against spectacle as an appeal to the senses, not the imagination, he rejected Italian commedia and condemned plays that featured animals, thunder and lightning, and "machines." Towards the end of his career Dryden was happy to renounce the theatre forever and concentrate on work that he preferred: the writing of poetry and essays. But in the summer of 1665 when Dryden and his wife fled plague­ JOHN DRYDEN stricken London for the countryside taking along only a few books, the the­ atres had been re-opened for only a few years and there were exciting new critical ideas from France to be debated. There in a quiet rustic setting Dryden went fishing and wrote theory (An Essay of Dramatic Poesy), para­ phrasing and quoting directly from Corneille's Prefaces that lay open on the desk. Never having been to France, Dryden knew the French dramatist:S plays John DRYDEN (1631-1700) was short and plump, "of a fresh color, and a not from theatre, but from the study. down look-and not very conversible," according to Alexander Pope. Like his In An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Dryden created a new kind of theoreti­ spokesman Neander in An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Dryden represented the cal work addressed to a cultivated audience of non-specialists and written in new man from a new class for a new age: the professional writer who associ­ an urbane conversational prose that avoided the technical jargon and arrogant ates primarily with other literary figures and is not regarded by polite society long-windedness of bickering pedants.
    [Show full text]