Staging the sea-changes on an enchanted island: Adapting “The Tempest” for the Interregnum and the Restoration
Abstract
This dissertation examines five separate adaptations of Shakespeare's play that were performed and published from 1642 to 1685. Each of these restages the process of political restoration and the trope of monarchy in order to address its audience's political and cultural concerns. For example, Humphrey Moseley's 1647 folio publication of Fletcher and Massinger's The Sea-Voyage was addressed to individuals who resisted or had doubts about the Interregnum. Similarly, the Duke's Company's 1668 and 1674 versions of The Enchanted Island were intended to placate those who questioned the king's ability to rule a Protestant nation. Thomas D'Urfey's A Commonwealth of Women, conversely, reflected the nation's (short-term) willingness to accept a Catholic king. This dissertation also traces the history of the relationship between the theater and print culture, which has helped to define modern literary studies. This relationship was probably most accommodating during the Interregnum as print preserved the drama until the theaters' reopening in 1660 and gained for it a wider readership than that which manuscripts permitted. Following the Restoration, the relationship between the theater and print culture became more conflicted as the modern definition of authorship emerged. This conflicted relationship would presage the growing division between public entertainment and private edification that would produce the contradiction between Shakespeare's cultural preeminence and the culture's generic hierarchy that placed drama below poetry and prose.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Rudolph, Purdue University.
Subject Area
British and Irish literature|Theater
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