Overview

This six-volume anthology documents the history of women's drama throughout the 18th century, starting with the emergence in 1695-6 of the second generation of women dramatists in succession to Aphra Benn. Containing a representative selection of newly edited and annotated texts by leading woman dramatists of the period from 1696 to 1800, the anthology reflects the changes in Britain's global realignment in class models and perception of other peoples. If women's drama quickly ceases to express the raw rage at the oppression of female sexuality that is evident in Behn and Manley, it continues to show women controlling their lives through manipulation of an increasingly complex and intellectually diverse society. In the 1690s, dramatists were meditating on the 1688 revolution (and its implications for the man's authority within marriage) and Britain's international horizons were defined by its war with France and by its transatlantic colonial possessions. At the end of the period Britain was the dominant world power, ruling India, apprehensively contemplating the aftermath of another revolution, in France. From 1670 until her death in 1689, Aphra Benn had established herself as one of the leading dramatists of her time, having far more new plays performed during these years than any competitor, and paving the way for the surge in women's playwriting towards the end of the century: between 1695 and 1700, six new women dramatists had plays premiered, and from then on women consistently made an important and diverse contribution to the stage. Those included in this collection include Catherine Trotter (1679-1749), Mary Pix (1666-c.1720), Delarivier Manley (1663-1724), Eliza Haywood (c.1693-1736), Susanna Centlivre (c.1670-1723), Elizabeth Griffith (c.1720-93), Elizabeth Inchbald (1753-1821) and Hannah Cowley (1743-1809). Catherine Trotter, Mary Pix and Delarivier Manley formed an important trio of women dramatists at the end of the 17th centuiry. Catherine Trotter was the first woman to adapt a work of Behn's for stage (the novel Agnes de Castro ). Manley, who like Trotter has never appeared in a complete scholarly edition, was probably the most talented of the trio and also an important writer of fiction. Her best play, The Royal Mischief , portrays the patriarchal suppression of female desire with a frankness unique in the 1690s. Eliza Haywood - a disciple of Manley in the writing of scandalous prose fiction - wrote two original plays, of which A Wife to be Lett (1723) is particularly notable for its harsh portrayal of the commodification and near-prostitution of women. Writing about Susanna Centlivre, in his Lectures on the English Comic Writers , William Hazlitt remarked: Her plays have a provoking spirit and volatile salt in them which still preserves them from decay . Elizabeth Inchbald and Hannah Cowley were perhaps the most successful female dramatists of the late 18th century. Both were admired by Sheridan for their original work and adaptations.

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9781851966165

Table of Contents

Reviews

'In contextualizing these women playwrights in the larger, mixed-gender tradition of the theatre, Hughes maps a shift in the political climate dating from Jeremy Collier's 1698 polemic against stage profaneness and post-Revolutionary depictions of tyranny that changed the representation of authority on the stage... Hughes does indeed locate some feminist themes, particularly suggesting that female dramatists satirize learned ladies for the misdirection of intellect, not, as male dramatists tend to do, for intellectualism itself, and he shows that women sometimes portrayed courtship angrily as sexual tyranny.' - Barbara M Benedict, Studies in English Literature 'The temptation to annexe women's dramatic writing into a revised literary canon is great but, as the introductions to these volumes demonstrate, we can gain much more for the recovery of women's work if we read these texts in the context for which they were written - for performance in the live theatre. The cost of this excellent collection of women's plays will limit its usefulness to teachers who might like to include the works on their courses (volumes are not available individually). But I would strongly recommend its inclusion in every library in order that readers (and performers) might have access to the enriched understanding and appreciation of the stagecraft of these forgotten female playwrights that this anthology offers.' - Gilli Bush-Bailey, Women's Writing 'Eighteenth-Century Women Playwrights is a meticulously edited, informatively annotated, and beautifully produced six-volume anthology of plays; general editor Derek Hughes and publisher Pickering & Chatto are to be commended for making these works accessible and comprehensible to today's reader. The collection transcribes the first editions of twenty-five plays - most previously unavailable in modern editions - written by the eighteenth-century's most famous women dramatists. Obviously, the importance of making these plays newly available cannot be underestimated. To the crucial act of editing these texts, the anthology adds an excellent introductory essay for each author and play, clear chronology for each author, fascinating list of actors for each volume, complete endnotes for each play, and selected bibliography for each volume. The result is an anthology that not only reproduces important primary texts, but facilitates a new exploration of the woman playwright's complex cultural position and encourages a new understanding of the changing literary demands of the eighteenth-century stage... The collection is consistently strong; each volume meets the anthology's high standards for textual editing, annotation, and explication. Hughes and the volume editors must be praised for the accuracy of these editions. For each volume, I compared a selected play to its first edition and found no errors in transcription. Each play is presented in its original form: capitalisation, italicisation, contemporary spelling, and awkward punctuation are maintained. The reader can be assured that he or she is receiving an accurate example of the dramatist's writing as published for her eighteenth-century audience... The strength of this anthology obviously lies in the dramatic works, shown at their best due to the care with which they have been selected and edited. But it is the well researched and engagingly written introductions and notes which make the works come alive for the reader. Eighteenth-Century Women Playwrights will ensure a new audience for these works; it will also ensure an audience that understands the richly varied lives - the literary ambitions, theatrical expectations, political concerns, and feminist positions - of these women writers. Hughes and the volume editors are to be thanked for an anthology no academic library should be without.' - Cheryl L Nixon, Eighteenth-Century Women

'A meticulously edited, informatively annotated, and beautifully produced six-volume anthology of plays; general editor Derek Hughes and publisher Pickering & Chatto are to be commended for making these works accessible and comprehensible to today's reader ... an anthology no academic library should be without.' Eighteenth-Century Women

Author Information

Antje Blank is at the University of East Anglia Anne Kelley is at the University of Hertfordshire Derek Hughes is at the University of Warwick Jacqueline Pearson is at Manchester University Betty Rizzo is at City University, New York Margarete Rubik is at the University of Vienna Angela Smallwood is at the University of Nottingham Eva Muller-Zettelmann is at the University of Vienna

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