Inheriting the Stage: Pre-Interregnum Drama in the Restoration

Abstract

Inheriting the Stage: Pre-Interregnum Drama in the Restoration is a study of the intersection of Restoration politics and the appropriation of early modern drama on stage and in print. I examine how publication, performance, and adaptation shaped the reception and canonization of the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries in the period from 1660-1685. Through analyzing the uses of these texts alongside the Restoration’s renegotiation of monarchy and government, I argue that the literary development of English drama is grounded in its ability to serve as a testing space for political ideology. By integrating existing Shakespeare-centric studies into a broader literary and political history, I explore the politicized roots of early modern dramatic canonization. Particular attention is given to how various agents—writers, publishers, performers, and audiences—contextualized drama within the Restoration’s revaluation of its cultural and political past.

The first chapter examines how printed play texts and illicit performances during the Interregnum shaped the canon of early modern drama that was available to Restoration dramatists. The second chapter explores how early performances and adaptations (1660-1666) supported the Restored monarchy’s official stance of forgiveness towards actions that had taken place in the English Civil Wars. In the following chapter (1666-1678), I examine how this support turned to subtle questioning of Charles II’s increasingly authoritarian policies through plays that critique the roles of subject and ruler. The second half of this project examines a shift in uses of pre-Interregnum drama during the Popish Plot in the late 1670s and the Exclusion Crisis in the early 1680s. While the earlier years of the Restoration saw the revival and adaptation of a wide variety of plays, this period produced a concentration of adaptations of Shakespeare’s Greek and Roman history plays (the subject of Chapter 5) and English history plays (the subject of Chapter 6). While past scholarship has argued that these plays demonstrate allegiance to newly formed political parties, I contend that the plays are far more politically ambivalent than has been recognized, and that they demonstrate a broader cultural concern over the uses of political power.