Title: "With old plays you have so long been cloyed": James Shirley's influence on Aphra Behn
Source document: Theatralia. 2021, vol. 24, iss. 1, pp. 43-60
Extent
43-60
-
ISSN1803-845X (print)2336-4548 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/TY2021-1-4
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/143813
Type: Article
Language
License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
This article emphasises the unrecognised popularity of the Caroline playwright James Shirley's drama on the Restoration stage, demonstrating that – after Fletcher – Shirley, Shakespeare and Jonson pegged pretty level in the 1660s when it came to revivals. Aphra Behn's use of Shirley's The Lady of Pleasure (printed 1637) in her later play, The Lucky Chance (performed 1686), raises questions about why neither it, nor Shirley's popular The Bird in a Cage (printed 1633) were revived in the Restoration. Behn must have been reading Shirley in the 1680s since there are direct verbal echoes in her play, arguing for a direct engagement with earlier drama. Scholars repeatedly connect The Bird in a Cage to Behn because Shirley's playlet leaves room for a lesbian desire which reverberates also within Behn's poetry and other drama. Shirley and Behn also share an interest in the politics of transactional sex, themes that run through both Shirley plays and also in so much of Behn's writing. The Lucky Chance follows both Shirley plays in showing the negotiations necessary for women to remain both independent and virtuous in a system stacked against them.
Note
This article was supported by the Czech Science Foundation project GA19–07494S. English Theatre Culture 1660–1737.
References
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[2] BEHN, Aphra. 1915. The Works of Aphra Behn. Montague Summers (ed.). 6 vols. London: William Heinemann, 1915.
[3] BENTLEY, G. E. 1941–1968. The Jacobean and Caroline Stage: Dramatic Companies and Players. 7 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941–1968.
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[8] ERIKSON, Robert A. 1996. Lady Fulbank and the Poet's Dream in Behn's Lucky Chance. In Broken Boundaries: Women and Feminism in Restoration Drama. Katherine M. Quinsey (ed.). Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1996: 89–110.
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[12] HOWE, Elizabeth. 1992. The First English Actresses: Women and Drama, 1660–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
[13] HUME, R. D. 1976. The Development of English Drama in the Late Seventeenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976.
[14] JONSON, Ben. 1995. Volpone (1606). In Gordon Campbell (ed.). The Alchemist and Other Plays. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
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[16] MAGUIRE, Nancy Klein. 2005. Regicide and Restoration: English Tragicomedy, 1660–1671. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
[17] MARSDEN, Jean I. 1991. Rewritten Women: Shakespearean Heroines in the Restoration. In Jean I. Marsden (ed.). The Appropriation of Shakespeare: Post-Renaissance Reconstructions of the Works and the Myth. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991: 43–56.
[18] NOYES, Robert Gale. 1935. Ben Jonson on the English Stage 1660–1776. New York/London: Benjamin Blom, 1935.
[19] PEPYS, Samuel. 1893. The Diary of Samuel Pepys, transcribed by Mynors Bright from the shorthand manuscript in the Pepysian Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge; edited with additions by Henry B. Wheatley. New York: Random House. Available online at https://www.pepysdiary.com.
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[21] PRYNNE, W. 1633. Histrio-mastix The players scourge, or, actors tragædie. London: Printed by E[dward] A[llde, Augustine Mathewes, Thomas Cotes] and W[illiam] I[ones] for Michael Sparke. Available online at http://0-search.proquest.com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/books/histrio-mastix-players-scourge-actors-tragædie/docview/2240852716/se-2?accountid=14888. [Accessed 7 Jan. 2021]
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[23] SANDERS, Julie. 2006. The Bird in a Cage by James Shirley. In Hero Chalmers, Julie Sanders and Sophie Tomlinson (eds.). Three Seventeenth-Century Plays on Women and Performance: The Wild-Goose Chase by John Fletcher, The Bird in a Cage by James Shirley, The Convent of Pleasure by Margaret Cavendish. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006.
[24] SHIRLEY, James. 1986. The Lady of Pleasure (1637). Ronald Huebert (ed.). Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986.
[25] SORELIUS, Gunnar. 1966. 'The Giant Race Before the Flood': Pre-Restoration Drama on the Stage and in the Criticism of the Restoration. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1966.
[26] TRAUB, Valerie. 1992. The (In)Significance of 'Lesbian' Desire in Early Modern England. In Susan Zimmerman (ed.). Erotic Politics: Desire on the Renaissance Stage. London: Routledge, 1992: 150–169.
[27] TRAUB, Valerie. 2010. 'Friendship So Curst': Amor Impossibilis, the Homoerotic Lament and the Nature of Lesbian Desire. In John C. Beynon and Caroline Gonda (eds.). Lesbian Dames: Sapphism in the Long Eighteenth Century. London: Routledge, 2010: 9–44.
[28] VAN LENNEP, W., E. L. AVERY, A. H. SCOUTEN, G. W. STONE and C. B. HOGAN. 1960–1968. The London Stage, 1660–1800: A calendar of plays, entertainments & afterpieces, together with casts, box-receipts and contemporary comment: Compiled from the playbills, newspapers and theatrical diaries of the period. 5 vols. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press. Available online at https://www.eighteenthcenturydrama.amdigital.co.uk/LondonStage/Database. Marlborough: Adam Matthew Digital, 2016. [Accessed 6 Jan. 2021]
[29] WALKER, K. 1991. "New Prison": Representing the Female Actor in Shirley's The Bird in a Cage (1633). English Literary Renaissance 21 (1991): 3: 385–400. | DOI 10.1111/j.1475-6757.1991.tb00745.x
[30] WHITMORE RARE BOOKS, n.d. Histrio-Mastix. The Players Scourge, or Actors Tragaedie. by William Prynne Available online at https://www.whitmorerarebooks.com/pages/books/2155/william-prynne/histrio-mastix-the-players-scourge-or-actors-tragaedie. [Accessed 7 Jan. 2021]
[31] WOOD, A. 1691–1692. Athenæ Oxonienses. 2 vols. London: printed for Thomas Bennett, 1691–1692.
[2] BEHN, Aphra. 1915. The Works of Aphra Behn. Montague Summers (ed.). 6 vols. London: William Heinemann, 1915.
[3] BENTLEY, G. E. 1941–1968. The Jacobean and Caroline Stage: Dramatic Companies and Players. 7 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941–1968.
[4] BUTLER, Martin. 1984. Theatre and Crisis 1632–1642. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
[5] BOOTH, Roy. 2010. Caroline Theatre. In A New Companion to English Renaissance Literature. Michael Hattaway (ed.). Oxford: Blackwell, 2010: 166–175.
[6] CLARK, S. 2001. Shakespeare and Other Adaptations. In S. J. Owen (ed.). A Companion to Restoration Drama. 2nd ed., Oxford: Blackwell, 2008. Available online at https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118663400.ch16. [Accessed 6 Jan. 2021] | DOI 10.1002/9781118663400.ch16
[7] CROWTHER, Stefania. 2017. James Shirley and the Restoration Stage. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
[8] ERIKSON, Robert A. 1996. Lady Fulbank and the Poet's Dream in Behn's Lucky Chance. In Broken Boundaries: Women and Feminism in Restoration Drama. Katherine M. Quinsey (ed.). Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1996: 89–110.
[9] GOODE, Dawn M. 2013. "Under a Petticoat": Excess Femininity and Lesbian Desire on the Restoration and Early Eighteenth–Century British Stage. Journal for Eighteenth–Century Studies 36 (2013): 177–190. | DOI 10.1111/j.1754-0208.2012.00500.x
[10] GURR, Andrew. 2009. The Shakespearean Stage 1574–1642. 4th ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
[11] HAGGERTY, George E. 2009. "The Queen was not shav'd yet": Edward Kynaston and the Regendering of the Restoration Stage. The Eighteenth Century 50:4 (2009): 309–326. | DOI 10.1353/ecy.0.0045
[12] HOWE, Elizabeth. 1992. The First English Actresses: Women and Drama, 1660–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
[13] HUME, R. D. 1976. The Development of English Drama in the Late Seventeenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976.
[14] JONSON, Ben. 1995. Volpone (1606). In Gordon Campbell (ed.). The Alchemist and Other Plays. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
[15] LAMONT, W. 2011. Prynne, William (1600–1669), pamphleteer and lawyer. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Available online at https://0-doi-org.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/10.1093/ref:odnb/22854. [Accessed 7 Jan. 2021]
[16] MAGUIRE, Nancy Klein. 2005. Regicide and Restoration: English Tragicomedy, 1660–1671. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
[17] MARSDEN, Jean I. 1991. Rewritten Women: Shakespearean Heroines in the Restoration. In Jean I. Marsden (ed.). The Appropriation of Shakespeare: Post-Renaissance Reconstructions of the Works and the Myth. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991: 43–56.
[18] NOYES, Robert Gale. 1935. Ben Jonson on the English Stage 1660–1776. New York/London: Benjamin Blom, 1935.
[19] PEPYS, Samuel. 1893. The Diary of Samuel Pepys, transcribed by Mynors Bright from the shorthand manuscript in the Pepysian Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge; edited with additions by Henry B. Wheatley. New York: Random House. Available online at https://www.pepysdiary.com.
[20] PROQUEST, n.d. English Drama Database. Available online at http://www.proquest.com.
[21] PRYNNE, W. 1633. Histrio-mastix The players scourge, or, actors tragædie. London: Printed by E[dward] A[llde, Augustine Mathewes, Thomas Cotes] and W[illiam] I[ones] for Michael Sparke. Available online at http://0-search.proquest.com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/books/histrio-mastix-players-scourge-actors-tragædie/docview/2240852716/se-2?accountid=14888. [Accessed 7 Jan. 2021]
[22] ROBERTS, Suzanne. 1994. Representations of Chivalry, Gender Relations and the Roles of Women in the Plays of James Shirley. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Adelaide, 1994.
[23] SANDERS, Julie. 2006. The Bird in a Cage by James Shirley. In Hero Chalmers, Julie Sanders and Sophie Tomlinson (eds.). Three Seventeenth-Century Plays on Women and Performance: The Wild-Goose Chase by John Fletcher, The Bird in a Cage by James Shirley, The Convent of Pleasure by Margaret Cavendish. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006.
[24] SHIRLEY, James. 1986. The Lady of Pleasure (1637). Ronald Huebert (ed.). Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986.
[25] SORELIUS, Gunnar. 1966. 'The Giant Race Before the Flood': Pre-Restoration Drama on the Stage and in the Criticism of the Restoration. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1966.
[26] TRAUB, Valerie. 1992. The (In)Significance of 'Lesbian' Desire in Early Modern England. In Susan Zimmerman (ed.). Erotic Politics: Desire on the Renaissance Stage. London: Routledge, 1992: 150–169.
[27] TRAUB, Valerie. 2010. 'Friendship So Curst': Amor Impossibilis, the Homoerotic Lament and the Nature of Lesbian Desire. In John C. Beynon and Caroline Gonda (eds.). Lesbian Dames: Sapphism in the Long Eighteenth Century. London: Routledge, 2010: 9–44.
[28] VAN LENNEP, W., E. L. AVERY, A. H. SCOUTEN, G. W. STONE and C. B. HOGAN. 1960–1968. The London Stage, 1660–1800: A calendar of plays, entertainments & afterpieces, together with casts, box-receipts and contemporary comment: Compiled from the playbills, newspapers and theatrical diaries of the period. 5 vols. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press. Available online at https://www.eighteenthcenturydrama.amdigital.co.uk/LondonStage/Database. Marlborough: Adam Matthew Digital, 2016. [Accessed 6 Jan. 2021]
[29] WALKER, K. 1991. "New Prison": Representing the Female Actor in Shirley's The Bird in a Cage (1633). English Literary Renaissance 21 (1991): 3: 385–400. | DOI 10.1111/j.1475-6757.1991.tb00745.x
[30] WHITMORE RARE BOOKS, n.d. Histrio-Mastix. The Players Scourge, or Actors Tragaedie. by William Prynne Available online at https://www.whitmorerarebooks.com/pages/books/2155/william-prynne/histrio-mastix-the-players-scourge-or-actors-tragaedie. [Accessed 7 Jan. 2021]
[31] WOOD, A. 1691–1692. Athenæ Oxonienses. 2 vols. London: printed for Thomas Bennett, 1691–1692.