Household Business: Domestic Plays of Early Modern EnglandThe Domestic Play Flourished on the English popular stage during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Its roots were predominantly native, rather than classical, and its mainspring was the staging of domestic conflict amongst English characters from the middle ranks of society. Household Business traces the genre's origins in the cycle plays of medieval England and examines its aesthetic configurations in relation to extra-literary discourses and practices that underwrote Renaissance ideologies of private life. At a time when the orthodox view of the family defined it as the foundation of the social order, a number of domestic dramas took a more critical perspective, stressing the contradictions and struggles that attend marriage and the patriarchial family. In addition to well-known domestic dramas as A Woman Killed with Kindness, Arden of Fevershaw, The Witch of Edmonton, and A Yorkshire Tragedy, Comensoli analyzes less well-studied plays as A Warning for Fair Women, Two Lamentable Tragedies, and The Late Lancashire Witches. The book also provides an extensive and timely assessment of domestic comedy, demonstrating how plays such as The London Prodigal, The Fair Maid of Bristow, and The Honest Whore (Parts I and II) resist homiletic paradigms in favour of a more dialectical dramaturgy. |
Contents
Medieval and Tudor Contexts | 27 |
Domestic Tragedy and Private Life | 65 |
The Menial Household and the Politics of Plenty | 103 |
Copyright | |
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Household Business: Domestic Plays of Early Modern England Viviana Comensoli No preview available - 1996 |
Common terms and phrases
action Ages Alice Anne Anne's Arden argues audience authority becomes behaviour body century characters civility claim comedy common conduct contemporary crimes cultural death Dekker discourses domestic drama domestic tragedy duty early modern edition effect Elizabethan emphasis England English example Fair father female Frankford's Further genre Griselda Grissil hand Heywood homiletic hospitality household husband ideal ideology important individuals instruct interest Introduction Killed with Kindness late literature London manners marriage married Master means medieval Middle moral Mother murder nature notes observes Patient patriarchal play plot points political poor popular practice Press punishment references relation Renaissance role Sawyer scene sixteenth social society space spectator stage status structures suggests texts theatre Thomas tion traditional University virtue Warning Whore wife wife's Witch witchcraft wives Woman Killed women writes York