Abstract: This article grows out of a larger project on religious and national stereotyping and prejudice in early modern England. I am interested in what the English thought of, and how they chose to represent, religious minorities within England – such as Catholics, Puritans, and Protestant dissenters and separatists – and also foreign nationals (whether residing within the British Isles or overseas) – particularly the Scots, Welsh, Irish, Spanish, Dutch, and French. The aim is less to document English xenophobia and religious bigotry than to explore the structure and nature of stereotypical representations: how they were constructed, how they might be challenged, and how they could be ideologically laden and thus ... Read More Keywords: Irish; Great Britain; British; French; Charles; Manuscripts, English ǂx History; Newsletters; English literature; Theater and society; Cordner, Michael; Doyle, Arthur Conan, PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Addressing Sir Richard Newdigate on November 29, 1677, a newsletter dispatched from Whitehall imparts the following piece of gossip: "Capt Lloyd advises me that Mr Palmer is dash't out of ye Rolle of Justices by ye Kings Imediate hand. ye reason I presume I need not tell your Worp."2 A reader familiar with Charles II's court would have known the reason to which the newsletter writer, likely Henry Muddiman, alludes—Mr. Palmer being the recalcitrant husband of the king's former mistress, Barbara Palmer, Duchess of Cleveland and, thus, not an individual in line in any way for the king's favor.3 What is interesting about this piece of gossip is the way that it reveals the greater privilege allowed to the manuscript ... Read More Keywords: Irish; Great Britain; British; French; Charles; Manuscripts, English ǂx History; Newsletters; English literature; Theater and society; Cordner, Michael; Doyle, Arthur Conan, PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The London Gazette, No. 1338, September 12-16, 1678The September 12, 1678 issue of The London Gazette features an advertisement for an enslaved youth who has run away from his master after "the first instant." Detailing the twelve-year old male's distinguishing characteristics, the notice captures the markings of the domestic and the global as displayed on the young boy's body. He wears a "gray cloth Livery," "the Lace mixed with black, white, and orange colors." It was fashionable among London elite to have enslaved Africans as servants, and "young black males of the period" were particularly "prized for their youth." The twelve-year old's livery likely marks his labor as a footman or personal attendant. The ... Read More Keywords: Irish; Great Britain; British; French; Charles; Manuscripts, English ǂx History; Newsletters; English literature; Theater and society; Cordner, Michael; Doyle, Arthur Conan, PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In this essay, I examine how John Milton represents Satan's adaptation of English processional entries and pageantry to claim ownership of territory through the signification of physical matter as space. Milton, in fact, links Satan's first disobedience to the ceremonial forms of a coronation entry. While these forms are not necessarily exclusive to Royalists—after all, Cromwell's "coronation" was memorialized with its own stately procession—Milton draws attention to these elaborate displays because they reconceive of the physical environment as symbolic markers, emptying it of its substance and, through this process, the Father's "vital vertue."Although I will briefly discuss other pageants, including Lord Mayor's ... Read More Keywords: Irish; Great Britain; British; French; Charles; Manuscripts, English ǂx History; Newsletters; English literature; Theater and society; Cordner, Michael; Doyle, Arthur Conan, PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: By the second half of the eighteenth century, the Restoration was no longer the recent if deplorable past but rather a distinct historical era defined by its monarch, much like the time of good Queen Bess to which it was frequently compared. For those looking back, it was an age that represented not the ideal of "manly" English evoked by the mythical world of Elizabeth but rather a threat to all that England and the English held dear. In the eyes of the later eighteenth century, the Restoration was defined by its legendary licentiousness, licentiousness manifested in its artistic remains and embodied most horrifically in the creations of Wycherley, Etherege, Congreve and their fellow playwrights. Through the arts ... Read More Keywords: Irish; Great Britain; British; French; Charles; Manuscripts, English ǂx History; Newsletters; English literature; Theater and society; Cordner, Michael; Doyle, Arthur Conan, PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: From Daniel Defoe, The Life and Adventures of Roxana … London: S. Crowder, 1765.Before discussing two of the myths I want to examine in some detail, I want to glance at Defoe's ironic picture of the Restoration from his True-Born Englishman (1700):The Civil Wars, the common Purgative,Which always use to make the Nation thrive,Made way for all that strolling Congregation,Which throng'd in Pious Charles's Restoration.The Royal Refugee our Breed restores,With Foreign Courtiers, and with Foreign Whores:And carefully repeopled us again,Throughout his Lazy, Long, Lascivious Reign,With such a blest and True-born English Fry,As much Illustrates our Nobility.………………………………………………..Six Bastard Dukes survive his ... Read More Keywords: Irish; Great Britain; British; French; Charles; Manuscripts, English ǂx History; Newsletters; English literature; Theater and society; Cordner, Michael; Doyle, Arthur Conan, PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: A familiar chronological narrative of the Restoration stage begins with the reopening of the theaters in 1660 and continues with the tonal and moral shift prompted by Jeremy Collier's influential Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage in 1698. Accordingly, Collier's polemic was paradigmatic of an entrenched public opinion, which revoked the licentious excesses of those last forty years and led to the emergence of a new theatrical protocol through dramatists like William Congreve and Richard Steele. As Samuel Johnson opines in his canny valorization of Collier in "Life of Congreve," "Nothing now remained for the poets but to resist and fly" (222). In this alluringly teleological reading ... Read More Keywords: Irish; Great Britain; British; French; Charles; Manuscripts, English ǂx History; Newsletters; English literature; Theater and society; Cordner, Michael; Doyle, Arthur Conan, PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Jupiter desires the beautiful but faithful Alcmena, so assumes her absent husband Amphitryon's form to enjoy her. Mercury takes on Amphitryon's servant Sosia's shape to keep watch. The early return of the real Amphitryon and Sosia threatens to expose Jupiter's deception and destroy the domestic peace just as the victorious Amphitryon returns home from his foreign wars. This basic summary makes it easy to see the attractions of the Amphitryon myth for dramatists: a plot that unites theatrical spectacle with questions of identity and constancy, metatheatrical commentary on the art of acting or impersonation, and the opportunities provided for both heroics and farce by the intermingling of gods and mortals. John ... Read More Keywords: Irish; Great Britain; British; French; Charles; Manuscripts, English ǂx History; Newsletters; English literature; Theater and society; Cordner, Michael; Doyle, Arthur Conan, PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never gained the preeminence in historical fiction to which he aspired, and curiously, his most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes, takes an approach to the past quite distinct from historical romance. Rather than mythologizing history, the Sherlock Holmes stories take the mythologizing of the past itself as a central topic, particularly in their engagements with 17th-century tumult. For instance, "The Musgrave Ritual" (1893) and The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901) feature Civil War and Restoration-era exploits and misdeeds re-emerging as mysteries in late Victorian England. In both narratives, Sherlock Holmes exposes a usurper who threatens a rightful heir descended from a Royalist family. In ... Read More Keywords: Irish; Great Britain; British; French; Charles; Manuscripts, English ǂx History; Newsletters; English literature; Theater and society; Cordner, Michael; Doyle, Arthur Conan, PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
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