Readings in Renaissance Women's Drama: Criticism, History, and Performance 1594-1998

by S. P. Cerasano (Editor), Marion Wynne-Davies (Editor)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415164436
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/01/1998
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.88(w) x 9.69(h) x (d)

About the Author

S. P. Cerasano is in the English Department at Colgate University, and Marion Wynne-Davies is in the English Department at the University of Dundee. They co-edited Renaissance Drama by Women, published by Routledge, 1996.

Table of Contents

Introduction PART I Early commentaries, Introduction 1 Mary Sidney is Praised to Elizabeth I (1594) 2 Samuel Daniel to Mary Sidney (1594) 3 John Davies of Hereford Commends Mary Sidney and Elizabeth Cary (1612) 4 William Sheares to Elizabeth Cary (1633) 5 Jonson and Wroth (1640) 6 Elizabeth Cary’s Biography (1643–9) 7 Celebrating Several Ladies (1752) 8 The Cavalier’s Lady and her Plays (1872) 9 The First Scholarly Edition of Mary Sidney’s Antonie (1897) 10 Lumley’s Play First Published (1909) 11 The First Modern Edition of Mariam (1914) 12 Early Critical Recognition of Elizabeth Cary and Margaret Cavendish (1920) 13 Woolf on Margaret Cavendish (1925) 14 T.S.Eliot on Senecan Drama (1927) 15 Virginia Woolf on ‘Judith Shakespeare’ (1929) 16 The First Edition of The Concealed Fancies (1931) 17 Cary and ‘A Woman’s Duty’ (1940) 18 Mary Sidney: Philip’s Sister (1957) PART II Contexts and issues, Introduction 1 Women playwrights in England: Renaissance noblewomen 2 The Arts at the English Court of Anna of Denmark 3 ‘My seeled chamber and dark parlour room’: the English country house and Renaissance women dramatists 4 Women as patrons of English Renaissance drama 5 Women as spectators, spectacles, and paying customers 6 Women as theatrical investors: three shareholders and the second Fortune Playhouse 7 ‘Why may not a lady write a good play?’: plays by Early Modern women reassessed as performance texts PART III Early Modern women dramatists, Introduction ELIZABETH I 1 ‘We princes, I tell you, are set on stages’: Elizabeth I and dramatic self-representation JANE/JOANNA LUMLEY 2 Joanna Lumley (1537?-1576/77) ELAINE V. BEILIN 3 Jane Lumley’s Iphigenia at Aulis: multum in parvo, or, less is more 4 ‘Patronesse of the Muses’ MARGARET P. HANNAY 5 Mary Herbert: Englishing a purified Cleopatra ELIZABETH CARY 6 Elizabeth Cary (1585–1639) 7 The spectre of resistance: The Tragedy of Mariam (1613) MARGARET W. FERGUSON 8 Resisting tyrants: Elizabeth Cary’s tragedy BARBARA KIEFER LEWALSKI 9 An unknown continent: Lady Mary Wroth’s forgotten pastoral drama, ‘Loves Victorie’ MARGARET ANNE MCLAREN 10 ‘Like one in a gay masque’: the Sidney cousins in the theaters of court and country JANE CAVENDISH AND ELIZABETH BRACKLEY 11 ‘To be your daughter in your pen’: the social functions of literature in the writings of Lady Elizabeth Brackley and Lady Jane Cavendish MARGARET J.M. EZELL 12 ‘She gave you the civility of the house’: household performance in The Concealed Fancies MARGARET CAVENDISH 13 ‘My brain the stage’: Margaret Cavendish and the fantasy of female performance 14 ‘A woman write a play!’: Jonsonian strategies and the dramatic writings