Overview

A collection of critical scholarship on early modern closet plays performed in private non-playhouse settings between 1560 and 1670. Capturing a lively period of performance, this volume covers textual history, women's writing and contemporary staging. Scholars highlight the radical choices made by playwrights who were actively seeking to create a new theatre, distinct from the characteristics of the public stage. Studying a wide array of plays from 1560 to 1670, the book interrogates the role of women writers in the development of closet drama, early modern racialisation, translation and the circulation of particular motifs across the Channel. It pays close attention to Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam as a proto-feminist play that has become increasingly popular with teachers and directors. Contemporary performances of early modern closet plays such as Cleopatra, The Tragedy of Mariam, and Love’s Victory are discussed through interviews with scholars involved in performance revivals. By offering an extensive and detailed exploration of closet drama readers are invited to rethink early modern theatre as a whole by looking beyond the public-private divide.

Full Product Details

Author:   Aurélie Griffin (Sorbonne Nouvelle University, France) ,  Sophie Lemercier-Goddard (École normale Supérieure, France)
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:   The Arden Shakespeare
Dimensions:   Width: 14.20cm , Height: 2.20cm , Length: 21.80cm
Weight:   0.500kg
ISBN:  

9781350455030

ISBN 10:   1350455032
Pages:   296
Publication Date:   27 November 2025
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

Introduction by Aurélie Griffin (Sorbonne Nouvelle University, France) and Sophie Lemercier-Goddard (ENS de Lyon, France) I. Plays for the Page 1. Before Closet Drama: Periodization, Evidence, and Tudor Household Drama (Patrick Durdel, University of Lausanne, Switzerland) 2. Samuel Brandon’s Octavia between Closet Drama and Print: Re-Evaluating Influence (Elena Spinelli, Durham University, UK) 3. ‘When perform'd/ Will this dull vow be?’: George Chapman’s Unstaged Plays (Christine Sukic, University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne, France) II. Systems of Power 4. With all the ornaments on earth inrich’d’: Power and Imagined Properties in Mary Sidney and Samuel Daniel’s Cleopatra Plays (Daniel Cadman, Sheffield Hallam University, UK) 5. Race Construction in Fulke Greville’s Tragedies (Nora Galland, Côte d'Azur University, France) 6. ‘Do any men come among them?’ Dramatic Representations of Girls’ Schools on the Page and on the Stage” (Orlagh Davies, Durham University, UK) III. Women Writers 7. Women Writers and the Early Modern Closet: Classification, Performance and the Dramatic Canon (Ramona Wray, Queen’s University, Belfast, UK) 8. Elizabeth Brackley’s and Jane Cavendish’s The Concealed Fancies (c.1645): Space Geography (Marion Wynne-Davies, University of Surrey, UK) 9. Oral and Silent Reading as Performance in Margaret Cavendish’s Love’s Adventure and The Convent of Pleasure (Line Cottegnies, Sorbonne University, France) IV. Show and Tell in and around Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam 10. How to Do Things with Words: Learning and Teaching Rhetorics in Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam(Sophie Lemercier-Goddard, ENS de Lyon and Aurélie Griffin, Sorbonne Nouvelle University, France) 11. Shows and proofs uneven’: Women, evidence and uncertainty in The Tragedy of Mariam (Judith Hudson, Birkbeck University, UK) 12. All Passion Spent: Affective Worlds in Early Modern Closet Drama (Samuel Daniel, Elizabeth Cary, John Milton (Naya Tsentourou, University of Exeter, UK) V. Staging Closet Drama and Court Masques in the 21st century: Interviews with Directors 13. Staging Daniel’s Cleopatra (2013) and Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam (2022) Bethany Mayo (director, Baltimore Shakespeare Factory), Emma Whipday (Newcastle University, UK), Yasmin Arshad (University College London, UK) 14. Staging Lady Mary Wroth’s Love’s Victory (2022), Alison Findlay (Lancaster University, UK) and Emma Rucastle (Director, ELART Productions) Afterword by Alison Findlay (Lancaster University, UK) Index

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Author Information

Aurélie Griffin is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern English Literature, Sorbonne Nouvelle University, France. Sophie Lemercier-Goddard is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern English Literature at the École Normale Supérieure, France.

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