Closet Drama in Early Modern England: Women Writers and Private Performance

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.

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.