Popular Plays by Women in the Restoration and Eighteenth Century

Download or read book Popular Plays by Women in the Restoration and Eighteenth Century written by Tanya M. Caldwell and published by Broadview Press. This book was released on 2011-06-30 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology offers a selection of popular dramatic works by female playwrights from Aphra Behn in the 1670s through Hannah Cowley in the later eighteenth century. These plays were successful as plays of their time, not just as plays by women, together providing evidence that women dramatists often managed better than their male counterparts to please diverse audiences, who were notoriously fickle as well as predisposed to oppose them. Accessible to both graduates and undergraduates, Popular Plays by Women shows how these playwrights captured audiences through wit, social awareness, and dramatic dexterity. As well as including the prologues and epilogues of the four plays presented, this anthology provides additional materials in which female playwrights discuss the prejudices and special difficulties they face.