The Meridian Anthology of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Plays by Women

By Katharine M. Rogers

Book Overview

This extraordinary edition includes seven full-length plays from the era, including an unproduced play by Frances Burney, unavailable for centuries. Women playwrights of the Restoration and eighteenth century were bawdy and proper, apologetic and defiant, often derided and occasionally praised. The seven women represented in this groundbreaking anthology--the only collection of Restoration and eighteenth-century plays devoted exclusively to women--had but one thing in common: the desire to ignore convention and write for the stage. In 1660, when theatres in England reopened after years of Puritan repression, women trod the boards as actors for the very first time. By the end of the century they had stormed and breached another bastion of the male domain and become dramatists as well. Most available collections of plays from the period exclude them; traditional criticism overlooks or diminishes them. But their works, as seen here, hold their own against the most popular productions for the theater from 1678 to 1787, and do it with a distinctively female spirit. Each of these women--Aphra Behn, Frances Burney, Susanna Centlivre, Hannah Cowley, Elizabeth Inchbald, Mary Griffith Pix, and Mercy Otis Warren--legitimized the profession of playwright for their sex. They were the genre's prolific women pioneers whose body of work has remained unmatched until the twentieth century.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0452011108
• ISBN13: 9780452011106
• Release Date: July 1994
• Publisher: Plume Books
• Length: 560 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

If You Read Restoration Drama at All, You'll Want to Review These Titles

Right, Restoration drama (1660-1700) is probably an acquired taste--even on the stage. So you would probably want to start your reading of Restoration drama with a more general anthology. But if you have a general understanding of the standard plays and want to know about significant plays by women, then this is the book for you. Includes the following: Aphra Behn, Sir Patient Fancy; Mary Griffith Pix, The Spanish Wives; Susanna Centlivre, A Bold Stroke for a Wife; Mercy Otis Warren, The Group; Frances Burney, The Witlings; Hannah Cowley, The Belle's Stratagem; Elizabeth Inchbald, Such Things Are.