ABSTRACTS

PRINTED RESEARCH

Manuel J. Gomez Lara. "Discurso irónico en The Country Wife." Actas del VI Congreso de AEDEAN (1984). 155-164.

A study of irony in the play provides a clearer instances of the social evils targeted by Wycherley. Applying stylistic analysis to several scenes we observe how the pattern of knowledge/ignorance is used in the play to draw the net of hypocritical relations, which characterize Restoration upper classes. The comic "happy end" becomes a confused ceremony in which the characters decide to ignore what their own experience has taught them in order to keep their public face.

Rafael Vélez Núñez. "La locura femenina en el teatro de la Restauración." La mujer en la literatura de habla inglesa Ed. Mª del Rosario García-Doncel Hernández. Cádiz: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Cádiz, 1996. 49-76.

This analysis presents a general overview of Restoration mad songs performed by women actresses. It is argued that these songs function as a male-dominated medium to describe female sexuality as it is expressed in the performance of mad scenes. The main focus of the work is, however, a music-rhetorical analysis of some of the most famous Restoration mad songs. The particular language of madness and its musical setting signal the differences between female madness and masculine sanity, which becomes a gendered distinction on the stage.

Rafael Vélez Núñez. "William Davenant y la transformación del escenario: del entretenimiento político al drama musical." Stylistica: Revista Internacional de Estudios Estilísticos y Culturales 5 (1997-98), 33-46.

This paper analyses the changes in the theatrical productions during the Interregnum and the way they determined subsequent Restoration drama. Centring on Davenant's moral representations, the study discusses the importance of interregnum performances both as a necessary stage in the development and continuity of the theatrical tradition of the previous periods, especially those of the Court, and as the arena where, under new political circumstances, the Caroline masque would definitely occupy a new space in the dramatic operas of the Restoration.

Manuel J. Gomez Lara. "Astroea Redux: iconografía poética y prácticas políticas en la Restauración." Actas del XVIII Congreso de AEDEAN. Alcalá de Henares, 1997. 413-21.

Charles II's restoration and his political agenda are frequently evaluated by its long run effects. According to Christopher Hill, "after the defeat of the radicals in 1660 and the final elements of the old regime in 1688, the rulers of England organized a highly a successful commercial empire and system of class rule which proved to have an unsual staying power." The warning of contemporary historians about interpreting the Restoration as the accomplishment of a new political and social model rather than as a mere starting point has not stopped the enlargement of this cultural topic. This paper analyses several poetic texts produced between 1644 and 1660 in relation to two specific events: the death of Charles I and the coronation of his son. In both cases the ideological construction of the past controls the rhetoric of the poems, specially the use of emblematic and other symbolic images, and projects a temptative political agenda.

Rafael Vélez Núñez. "Transformations of Courtly Entertainments: Restoration Odes." Sederi 11 (2002). 277-283.

Court odes are one of Restoration musical-literary genres. As it seems to be customary with other kinds of literary output produced for the celebration of the court, these pieces have been neglected by contemporary criticism. A minor genre built on music and sycophantic texts, panegyric and ephemeral, is now analyzed in musicological terms only. In their time, however, court odes were regarded as innovative, although clearly associated to Jacobean, Caroline and French courtly pageantry and musical forms. An account of the development of the genre and of the multiple cultural influences it absorbs will help to place it in the context of Restoration England. On the basis of the frequent occurrence of the genre throughout the period, this paper seeks to study the composition and performance of these works in the light of the cultural politics of the new monarchy, i.e., their function as political vehicles to celebrate the restored court and monarch. By comparing this new type of pageantry to former early seventeenth-century court performances this analysis will try to demonstrate the experimental nature of the ode and, more generally, courtly entertaiments, as well as their ability to transform and suit various cultural circumstances within the history of English monarchy.

Rafael Vélez Núñez . "Melancholic Sounds: Singing Madness in Restoration Drama." Sederi 13 (2003), 219-27.

The apparition of mad characters on the English stage can be traced as far back as the first dramatic performances in the Elizabethan Age, and more predominantly throughout the seventeenth century. Theatrical insanity reflects the Renaissance attraction and interest in melancholy and mental illnesses, and becomes an arena where tortured psyches interact and express themselves. Madness seems somehow related to music in the Elizabethan and Jacobean drama as part of this more generalised interest, but the reformed Restoration stage is to recall this tradition and develop it into a completely new musical achievement: the mad song. This paper analyses Restoration mad songs as a landmark in the evolution of the conception of madness, in terms of its relationship to music as an expressive means. On the basis of early-seventeenth century dramatic performances and contemporary treatises on melancholy (Burton), the analysis will focus on Restoration madness as a climatic receptor of this tradition and the ways it transforms it.

Rafael Vélez Núñez. "Broken Emblems: Anne Killigrew's Pictorial Poetry." Re-shaping the Genres: Restoration Women Writers.Eds. Zenón Luis & Jorge Figueroa. Bern: Peter Lang, 2003. 49-66.

This paper analyses a number of poems that served as illustrative texts to Anne Killigrew's own paintings in the light of the symbolic codes of both secular and religious emblem books of her time. Although it is not usually given much critical attentions, the relationship between poetry and painting was common in Renaissance and seventeenth-century Europe. Killigrew inherits and rethinks that tradition, expanding the possibilities shown in the work of the early emblematists. Her ideology is gender-conscious, and voices a rebellion against the situation of women. Like other female writers of that period, Killigrew shows in her poems her preoccupation about male sexual aggression and female freedom, identity and community. Her rebellious ideology breaks a tradition of moral or religious emblems and transforms it by means of new images whose purpose is both to teach and denounce. In other words, she initiates a tradition of social and gendered emblems.

Manuel J. Gomez Lara. "Trotting to the Waters: Spas as Cultural Landscapes in Restoration Literature." Sederi 11 (2002). 219-240.

The concept of cultural landscape -the symbolic interaction between environments and humans- has been used in cultural geography and anthropology as a repository of information about social behaviour. I will borrow this conceptual frame to approach a series of Restoration works focusing on life at the spas. Shadwell's Epsom Wells (1674), Rawlins' Tunbridge Wells (1678) and several pamphlets and poems depict visitors to the wells drawing on several stereotypes: the mixture of social groups, the escatological effects of the waters, and the sexual freedom encouraged by a place where women often stayed on their own. I would like to argue that beyond its naturalistic character this picture of the spas provides some insights into the mechanisms through which several forms of satirical literature challenged and/or maintained discriminatory social categories. The literary renderings of this cultural landscape fed back into Restoration society by privileging a fashionable environment suitable to enact larger social conflicts, especially those of class and gender, and to expose the vices of the age.

UNPUBLISHED CONFERENCE PAPERS

Manuel J. Gómez Lara, Mª José Mora Sena, Juan A. Prieto Pablos. "'The Originals among the Tribe': Comic Satire in Shadwell's The Virtuoso." VIII SEDERI (Spanish Association of English Renaissance Studies) Conference. Sevilla: March, 1997.

In Shadwell's The Virtuoso, the main character is Sir Nicholas Gimcrack, an experimental scientist. The ridicule heaped upon him in the play has led to critical controversy over the scope of the author's satire. Some critics assert that Shadwell is attacking the view of science promoted by the Royal Society. The experiments that Sir Nicholas describes at great length throughout the play are parodies, distortions and, at times, almost literal transcriptions of reports contributed by members of the Society in their official publication, The Philosophical Transactions, or of works such as Robert Hooke's Micrographia (1667). Shadwell pokes fun at some members of the Society in particular: Hooke seems to have been the only one who thought himself ridiculed in the play, but Shadwell also introduces gibes at the expense of John Evelyn, Joseph Glanvill and Robert Boyle. However, Shadwell explicitly dissociates the character of his Virtuoso from the Royal Society. It is pointed out in the play that Sir Nicholas has not been admitted to the "College". He also speaks disparagingly against the utilitarian view of natural philosophy held by the Society. It has been claimed therefore that, instead of attacking the Society, Shadwell is upholding it as a model in order to expose Sir Nicholas as a fake scientist. Both interpretations are based on the assumption that Shadwell's play is primarily concerned with the nature of true science. But Sir Nicholas uses natural philosophy only to show off his wealth and standing, in an attempt to imitate of a socially prestigious attitude. The paper concludes that Shadwell's satire is not directed against a particular model of science, but against "the affectation and folly of those, who are not coxcombs by nature, but with great art and industry make themselves so".

Manuel J. Gómez Lara, Mª José Mora Sena, Juan A. Prieto Pablos. "Sine causa manifesta: Greensickness y la construcción de la sexualidad femenina en el drama del siglo XVII." XXI Congreso de AEDEAN. Sevilla: December, 1997.

The term "greensickness" refers to the green-hued paleness of those who suffered from it, but is also associated to hysteria and other sexual and mental disorders. The earliest occurrences of the term are found in seventeenth-century texts, typically in reference to female patients in the age of puberty. The "feminization" of the illness (like that of anorexia nervosa nowadays) was determined by cultural factors, and its symptoms were presented as the expression of the problems inherent to the activation of female sexuality and desire. Its characterization as an illness also justified the need to control that sexuality; the means range beyond the scope of medical treatment and extend to solutions inscribed within socially accepted practices, to the extent that matrimony was prescribed as the most suitable cure. However, the references to the greensickness in the seventeenth century -especially in literary texts- also serve to question this estalished discourse and reflect the fissures of contemporary patriarchal order in the definition of female sexuality. These fissures can be seen in plays and poems which present the unrepressed practice of sex as the most effective "Cure for ye Greene Sicknesse". There are also references to the potentially less risky treatments suggested in medical documents, such as walks in the open air, or the ingestion of mineral waters; but these prove ineffective, unless as the means to propitiate sexual encounters. The risks of unwanted pregnancy ultimately justify the need of the most appropriate remedy, marriage. However, for a number of authors, marriage was not a satisfactory solution unless the young women "join the parties according to their desires and wishes". This is the view commonly presented in Restoration comedies. In these works, the references to the greensickness stress the resistance of the young women to accept a full control of their sexuality. In fact, the female characters can even feign the symptoms of the illness in order avoid the tyranny of their fathers and meet the partners they choose. Thus the plays reflect a social model in which the impositions of marriage of convenience are viewed as unnatural.

M.J. Mora. "Type-casting as Strategy: Dryden's All for Love, 1677-1704". XI SEDERI Conference. Valladolid: February 2001.

By 1670 John Dryden had established himself as the leading poet and playwright of the time. Recognition of his professional merit had come with his appointment to the position of Poet Laureate and with the unprecedented success of The Conquest of Granada (1670). However, the quick progression of his career and the self-confidence he displayed in his writings soon placed him at the centre of a series of literary quarrels. In the following years he was pilloried in different works, of which the most notorious was Buckingham's The Rehearsal (1671). This paper analyzes the attacks on Dryden which appeared on the wake of Buckingham's play, focusing primarily on the caricature of the Laureate in the comedy The Reformation (1673), attributed to Joseph Arrowsmith. Although this satirical portrait is clearly indebted to The Rehearsal-in its ridicule of the absurdities of heroic drama and its depiciton of the poet as a conceited coxcomb and a social upstart-it already incorporates a new element that would become central in the writings mocking Dryden: his ciriticism of the style of Shakespeare, Fletcher and Jonson in The Defence of the Epilogue appended to the publication of The Conquest of Granada (1672).

Manuel J. Gómez Lara. "The History and Fall of Caius Marius (T. Otway, 1679): reescritura y tragedia política." XXV Congreso de AEDEAN. Salamanca: December, 2001.

In the last two decades the critical approach to the question of classical rewritings has left aside the conventional interest for the aesthetic debt of the rewritings with their original sources and focused upon the cultutal implications of intertextuality. From this perspective I will discuss The History and Fall of Caius Marius (Thomas Otway, 1679) and its relation with Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Otway uses Shakespeare to articulate Marius Junior and Lavinia romantic tragedy into the larger pattern of the conflict of the Roman Civil War between Marius and Sila. It is my contention that Otway's borrowing has to be viewed under the light of the events known as Popish Plot and also under the new rhetorical principles of pathetic tragedy backed by such influential authors as Dryden.

Manuel J. Gómez Lara. "The Politics of Modesty: the Collier Controversy and the Socities for the Reformation of Manners." The Female Wits: Women and Gender in Restoration England . Univ. Huelva: 7-8 November 2002.

The question of modesty must be read within a larger discursive network concerning female submission or, to be more precise, the reification of that submission into the new patriarchal structures favoured by the emerging middle classes. Protestant groups specially had elaborated active forms of social control on sexual behaviour, mainly using their ability to exert economic pressure on the lower orders via their control of the poor relief, and by exerting social pressure on all classes (Hill 1967). In Alan Hunt's words, what it originated as a practice of " moral self control" became soon an instrument for the governance of others. I will argue that the scenes from The Provoked Wife are specially serious because they deconstruct the narrative of natural subjection by consent that the Anglican Church was circulating as part of its ideological campaign to favour ecclesiastically regulated marriage.

Rafael Portillo. "Vizards, Gallants, Wenches and Wits: Playgoing in Early Restoration London." XIII SEDERI Conference. Vigo: March, 2003

The two patent playhouses operating in the British capital city in the 1660's and 70's did not likely draw huge crowds to their performances, as they were smaller and more expensive than those of Shakespeare's time. The possibilities of seeing straight drama were therefore rather restricted. However, theatre-houses were still as rowdy, noisy and troublesome as they had previously been, for Restoration playgoers regarded a performance as a festive occasion and a good opportunity to meet people and engage in different social activities. With a house clearly divided into three main areas according to price of admission pit, boxes and galleries designed, no doubt, to make class differences patent, the audience tended to behave according to certain fixed patterns, which playwrights, actors and theatre managers no doubt took into consideration when planning their shows. The present paper offers a general view of those spectators, and argues in favour of their determining influence on performances, the success or failure of plays and the dramatic literature itself. Wycherley's remark in Love in a Wood about the theatre being the meeting-house of the wicked is supposed to be ironical and far-fetched, but in view of the evidence found in contemporary plays and reports, the people who attended those performances were anything but attentive and well-behaved.

M.J. Mora. "'What one whore told the other' or, 'Two of a trade can seldom agree': the attacks on Dryden, 1668-1675". XIV SEDERI Conference. Jaén: February, 2003.

The paper analyzes the use of type-casting as a strategy to define character and character relationships on the Restoration stage. Contrasting the original cast of Dryden's All for Love (1677) with that of the 1704 revival, it argues that the choice of actresses for the main female parts assigns the type of the virtuous heroine to a different character in each production and reveals thus different conceptions of the play. In the 1677 performance, the pairing of Elizabeth Boutell in the role of Cleopatra against the domineering presence of Katherine Corey (Octavia) turns the adulterous mistress into an innocent heroine and places her at the moral centre of the play; this choice would inevitably direct the sympathy of the audience to this character, and seems designed to counteract the criticism of the king's behaviour impiclit in Sedley's Antony and Cleopatra, performed only a few months before. However, the 1704 production, performed at Whitehall on the occasion of the Queen's birthday, shows a significant shift in the definition of the two female characters: although Elizabeth Barry in the role of Cleopatra would be expected to create a character full of passion and pathos, the casting of Anne Bracegirdle as Octavia checks this effect, and indicates that it is the forsaken wife who is now identified as the virtuous heroine. This move modifies the original conception of the play, and brings it in line with the moral values represented by the court of Queen Anne.

Manuel J. Gómez Lara. "The Italianate Englishman in Restoration Comedy." XIV SEDERI Conference. Jaén: February, 2003.

According to the reformer Roger Ascham, the type of the anglese italianato -an Italianate Englishman- refers "He, that by liuing, & traueling in Italie, bringeth home into England out of Italie, the Religion, the learning, the policie, the experience, the maners of Italie. That is to say, for Religion, in Papistrie or worse: for learnyng, lesse commonly than they caried out with them: for pollicie, a factious hart, a discoursing head, a mynde to medle in all mens matters: for experience, plentie of new mischieues neuer knowne in England before: for maners, varietie of vanities, and chaunge of filthy lyuing." It is my contention that this type is one among others which articulate English fears/attraction to/towards external pollution from the second half of the sixteenth century onwards. But in some Restoration comedies like The English Rogue (T. Thompson, 1668) or J. Arrowsmith's The Reformation (1673) the figure of the anglese italianato reappears as a parody of itself which enables the authors to present a satirical view of English sexual mores in an indirect -safe- way.

Rafael Vélez Núñez. "Theorizing Arcadia: translations of Virgil’s Second Eclogue in Restoration England". XV SEDERI Conference. Lisboa: March 2004.

Virgil’s eclogues, model of pastoral literature, were commonly translated and adapted for political (Spenser) and also didactic (Brinsley, Fleming) purposes in the Renaissance. Regardless the grandeur of the Roman poet and the importance of pastorals in the period, the second eclogue’s obvious homoerotic tone was approached differently and, mostly uneasily, by the majority of authors who dealt with it. During the Restoration, Virgil’s Bucolics are newly appraised, but this time from a more theoretical and literary critical perspective, as can be witnessed from the discussion on pastoralism attached to some editions of Virgil. By focusing mainly on Ogilby’s and Dryden’s translations of the poet’s works, as well as on collections by several authors, and in the light of contemporary bucolic criticism (Dryden, Rapin) this paper tries to investigate the various theoretical and practical strategies used to balance the instability and ambiguity set between the normalised academic discourses dealing with Virgil’s Bucolics and their homoerotic language. Finally it is argued that, however disguised as work of art, these poems were read as merely sexual, so that Virgilian same-sex affection was as depraved as any other and needed moral correction. Nevertheless, perhaps due to changing attitudes towards it, the Restoration seemed to be far more tolerant to same-sexness in comparison to previous periods within the seventeenth century.

M.J. Gómez-Lara, M.J. Mora. "The 'Anglicized Italian' in Restoration Comedy: Parodic Reversal of a Cultural Topos". The Mistress-Court of Mighty Europe. Univ. of Wales, Bangor: September, 2004.

The concept of the Italianate Englishman, as coined by Roger Ascham in The Scholemaster (1570), emerged in the midst of a national polemic about the good and evil of educational travel. This character’s eagerness to adopt foreign influences made him, once back home, a threat to the imaginary harmony of the English national character, as his newly acquired habits brought into the country dangerous forms of corruption: Popery, Machiavellian politics, and libertine mores. But as they voice their concern about contaminating external influences, Ascham and other authors reveal their anxiety about the fragile state of English national identity. It is hardly a coincidence that the first renderings of this topos appear when English society was undergoing a series of changes in politics and religion that dramatically challenged its cohesion.
Almost a hundred years later, several restoration comedies revive the motif of the Italianate Englishman. In the cultural and social context of the early Restoration period, the threats to the national character once associated with Italy have been replaced by a more immediate image, that of the corruption of the court. It is our aim in this paper to analyze the reformulations of this cultural topos, focusing primarily on Joseph Arrowsmith’s The Reformation (1673). This play introduces a parodic reversal of this figure—an “angliziced Italian”, who has learnt in his travels the fashions and manners of the London rakes. The play thus presents an amusing satire of the licentiousness and extravagance of the Stuart court, playing on the blurred limits of national identiy.

María José Mora, Manuel J. Gómez-Lara. "Revolution and the Moral Reform of the Stage: The Case of Durfey’s The Marriage-Hater Matched (1692)". Leviathan to Licensing Act: Theatre, Print, and their Contexts. Loughborough: September, 2004.

The development of Restoration Comedy after the Glorious Revolution is traditionally said to move towards a “sentimental” mode, more subtle and moral in its proposals about courtship and marriage. This transformation has often been associated with the rise of public opinion against the debauchery of the stage. However, the path to this new type of comedy was anything but smooth. In the years immediately following the Revolution, a number of plays show the difficulties of accommodating a new idea of marriage as a positive aspiration in itself for both partners, and not a simple means for social advancement and financial  profit. Durfey’s The Marriage-hater Matched (1692) offers an interesting example: the play purports to defend marriage as a divinely ordained institution which establishes order upon the chaos of instinct; it also preaches by example, since the resolution of the plot leads to no less than seven marriages and imposes poetic justice, effecting what Robert Hume has termed “the taming of the rake”. Yet the conclusion also shows that this apparently harmonious order can only be achieved through deception, and cannot be embraced even by the more positive characters without some degree of scepticism.

Juan A. Prieto-Pablos. "Coffee Houses and Restoration Drama". Leviathan to Licensing Act: Theatre, Print, and their Contexts. Loughborough: September, 2004.

References to coffee houses are very common in Restoration drama, but very few present a positive image of them. To the present-day reader of Restoration drama, this impression may come from the emphasis placed by dramatists of the 1680s on coffee houses as places where sedition and political rumour were brewed. This is, however, but the culmination of a process which had started much earlier. The emergence of the coffee houses had disruptive effects which were perceived beyond the boundaries of mere politics. The social status quo that had traditionally been modelled upon the modes of attendance to taverns and alehouses and other places of entertainment was challenged by the unrestricted amalgamation of customers of different social classes that coffee houses catered for; this made them suitable for criticism by conservatives, who regarded them as places in which social chaos was promoted. But the rapidly-growing fashion of coffee drinking was also perceived as a threat to the economic system based on the distribution and consumption of alcoholic drinks, therefore creating some anxiety among citizens concerned with the source of their own income. 
If we regard the general context of the Restoration throughout a historical perspective, the economic concerns are blurred by the overwhelming impetus of royalist and Tory attacks against the coffee houses. But the success of these attacks can only be properly measured if we bear in mind that distrust for coffee houses was much wider than it might seem to be. Moreover, it might be possible to assume that the earliest attacks came from the City itself. To show how and when this happened and how it evolved, I intend to refer to a variety of texts, mostly dramatic, written between the early 1660s and the mid-1680s in which coffee houses are mentioned, but I will pay special attention to two relatively neglected plays, Tatham's Knavery in All Trades (1664) and Sydserf's Tarugo's Wiles (1668), in which the description of a coffee house plays a central role. These descriptions will be set in contrast with those provided by plays written during the critical years of the Exclusion Crisis, such as D'Urfey's The Royalist (1682) or Crown's City Politiques (1683).

 

Rafael Vélez Núñez. "Flecknoe, Davenant and Interregnum Dramatic Theory". Leviathan to Licensing Act: Theatre, Print, and their Contexts. Loughborough: September, 2004.

Although traditionally neglected by criticism, which considers it as a vacuum, Interregnum drama played an important role in the history of seventeenth-century drama as a whole, as it is witnessed in contemporary approaches to it (Randall, Wiseman). Whereas the tragedies and comedies currently performed in the Caroline stage were banned, new dramatic genres were created, experimented and even performed in determined venues (schools, private houses). It seems paradoxical that the Puritan prohibition to perform somehow helped authors to develop new forms which, not only met the draconian prerequisites of strict morality, but also shed new light on the transformation of court productions, such as masques, and continental works, namely, opera. Among the various playwrights who continued writing during the Interregnum (Shirley, Jordan, Cavendish), John Flecknoe and Sir William Davenant stand as the most important figures in the invention of a new dramatic theory, in which music will become a pivotal factor. Thus in the preface to Ariadne Deserted by Theseus (1654), an adaptation of Monteverdi’s Lamento di Ariadna, Flecknoe celebrates the advantages of recitative music, which is ‘elevated from the vulgar’. Similarly, William Davenant was involved, even before the Interregnum, with opera, or rather, the fusion of music and drama. Apart from his dramatic experiments The First Day’s Entertainment at Rutland House (1656) and The Siege of Rhodes (1657), a treatise entitled A Proposition for the Advancement of Morality, is attributed to him. In there, Davenant discusses the didactic and educational power of certain performances built on music, drama and, most importantly, heroism. This paper will focus in these two figures and in the way their work questioned and revitalized drama. The analysis of their work, both theoretical and theatrical, will help to prove that the Interregnum was a necessary stage for subsequent genres, especially those related to music (musical drama, operas), and themes (heroism, heroic drama).

Manuel J. Gómez Lara. "The Provoked Wife (1697)  in Jeremy Collier’s A Short View of the Immorality and the Profaneness of The English Stage (1698): Reformation of Manners and Anti-Theatrical Discourse". XXVIII Congreso de AEDEAN. Valencia: December, 2004.

Jeremy Collier’s attack to Vanbrugh’s The Provoked Wife (1697) as “particularly rampant and scandalous” (Short 57) provides an instance of contemporary reception of Restoration texts; his stand against this and a few other plays is noteworthy as they furnish him with the main ammunitions to argue, “that nothing has gone farther in Debauching the Age than the Stage Poets, and Play-house” (Short “The Preface”). Although the changes of English comedy after the Glorious Revolution and the influence of works like A Short View in the development of the Augustan comedy of manners have frequently been discussed, I would suggest that the inquisitorial atmosphere against the stage fostered by the Societies and Collier’s antitheatrical diatribes played an important part in Vanbrugh and Congreve’s discrete retirement from the stage rather than in the evolution of the dramatic genres.

M. J. Mora. "Redeeming the Fallen Woman: Casting Strategies in Durfey’s The Marriage-Hater Match’d (1692)". XXVIII Congreso de AEDEAN. Valencia: December, 2004.

Thomas Durfey’s The Marriage-Hater Match’d (1692) concludes in an unsual way, effecting what Robert Hume has aptly termed “the taming of the rake”: Sir Philip Freewit, the “marriage-hater” of the title, is forced to marry his former mistress, Phoebe, the daughter of a poor country parson, who has already borne him a child. Although this ending might seem to impose poetic justice, the Restoration audience would hardly expect to see the gentleman rake punished, or the fallen woman redeemed. The resolution of the plot might be interpreted in terms of the “change in comedy” that many critics observe after the Glorious Revolution, a change from the cynical and libertine plays of the seventies to a more exemplary and sentimental mode. If Durfey’s play is, indeed, moving in this direction, I would argue that the casting of Anne Bracegirdle in the role of Phoebe is a central strategy to make this conclusion acceptable to the audience.

Manuel J. Gómez Lara. "Discourses on Health and Leisure and Modern Constructions of Holidays at the Restoration Spas". Style: Essays on Renaissance and Restoration Literature and Culture in Memory of Harriet Hawkins. Eds. Allen Michie and Eric Buckley. Newark: U of Delaware P, 2005.

The concept of place—the symbolic interaction between environments and humans— has been used in the fields of Cultural Geography and Anthropology as a repository of information about social behavior. This concept will help us approach a series of Restoration works focusing on life at the spas in the late seventeenth century.  Medical treatises, travelogues and literary pieces draw an iconography of the wells based upon several stereotypes: the confusion of social rank, the purging effects of the waters, and sexual promiscuity.  I will argue that this picture of the spas rather than a naturalistic environmental record is an attempt to construct these fashionable natural spaces as contact zones, suitable for an appealing display of non-traditional attitudes towards class and gender.  Eventually all these discourses contributed to the cultural understanding of the spas as places of mirth and fun in which everyday conflicts were to be set aside, thus helping to redefine in a way that was more appropriate to London.

Manuel J. Gómez Lara. "’A Cap of Grey Hairs for a Green Head’: The Character of the Benevolent Father in Thomas Shadwell’s Last Comedies". XVI SEDERI Conference. Murcia: May 2005.

Between the Glorious Revolution and 1694 —the moment when the growing pressure of certain social groups within the Anglican establishment becomes apparent—a fair number of plays reveal the difficulties of accommodating on the stage the new moral ideals promoted by William and Mary, and evince a strong reluctance to discarding a comic model which had proved a sure path to success for nearly two decades, and had determined both the repertoire and the specialized lines of actors and actresses suited to those roles. Thomas Shadwell’s last plays offer an interesting example of the reaction of the stage to the politics and morals associated with the new regime. Shadwell’s position as new laureate poet and his own theory of comic drama led him to enact in these comedies “the taming of the rake” (to borrow a phrase from Robert Hume), but each play shows a different degree of compromise with the moral reform of comedy. In this paper I will argue that Shadwell’s use of the figure of the benevolent father is a key dramatic element to stage the conversion of the rake. Even before the arrival of the new monarchs, Shadwell had already adapted the discursive type of the advisor in The Squire of Alsatia (1688); in his subsequent plays this character borrowed from conduct literature plays an essential role to promote in his comedies new forms of behaviour among gentlemen of the first society.

M.J. Mora. "The Cast of The Woman Turn’d Bully (1675). XVI SEDERI Conference. Murcia: May 2005.

The Woman Turn’d Bully was staged at the Dorset Garden Theatre in Spring 1675. We do not have much information on the circumstances surrounding the production of this comedy: the author’s name is not known, the date of the first performance is uncertain, and the cast is not recorded.  It is my purpose in this paper to show that we can at least shed some light on the cast.  Indirect evidence can be brought forth to show that the title role was played by the company’s leading actress, Mary Lee. An analysis of the character-types and of the specialized “lines”and skills of the actors in the Duke’s Company can also lead to some plausible hypotheses on several of the other parts.

Manuel J. Gómez Lara. "Characters, Humours and the Politics of Space in Restoration Comedy: Town and Country in The Woman Turned Bully". XVII SEDERI Conference. Cáceres: April 2006.

Traditional historicist critics have fashioned the concepts of Town, City and Country as stable categories. More recently McLaren et al (1999) have defined these concepts as having "permeable boundaries" hence the need for their particular reassessment in each specific text. The Woman Turned Bully, an anonymous comedy performed in 1675, presents a group of Country characters -a widow, her steward and maid, her son and daughter— who visit London and meet there a series of Town characters –from the witty gallant to the greedy common-lawyer. By means of a series of clichés popularized in books of character, the play offers an alternative both to Shadwell’s comedy of humours and Dryden’s comedy of wit. The corrupt common lawyer Docket and his clerk Dashwell are a good match for Widow Goodfield and her maid Loveall and though they all show the conventional weaknesses of the Town and Country respectively, they manage to come to the happy ending with enough dignity to avoid public scorn. This paper will try to relate these trends in dramatic characterization with the new policies of space developed in Restoration England when the influence of the metropolis resignified the whole concept of public space and its use by citizens of different social origin.

Rafael Portillo. "The Rise and Fall of Durfey’s Don Quixote Trilogy". XVII SEDERI Conference. Cáceres: April 2006.

Three musical dramas based on Don Quixote were written by Thomas D’Urfey—with music composed by several notable musicians—and were subsequently staged in London by the United Company in 1694-95. The first one was met with enthusiastic approval and, even though the second somehow managed to succeed, when the third play was performed, public opinion turned against the dramatist and the premiere became a real fiasco. This paper studies the texts of these three dramas and analyses the artistic and social circumstances in which they were produced, in an attempt at finding out the reasons for the initial success and later failure of the trilogy. By so doing, new light is cast on the way show business operated in late 17th-century London.

Manuel J. Gómez Lara. "Elizabeth I and the Popish Plot: The Iconography of Protestant History". Icons and Iconoclasts: The Long Seventeenth Century. Univ. of Aberdeen: July 2006.

The political campaign which targetted the Stuart royal family during the period 1678-82 for its suspected Catholic sympathies was vehicled through a diverse number of objetcs, publications and events. Many of the tracts,  playing cards, pamphlets, processions and plays included illustrations   which promote a new version of the English timelilne since the time of Henry VIII’s as part of their political campaign. These images stress the Providential nature of the English nation and visualize its History as a series of episodes of endurance without a narrative continuity. By doing so the actual chain of events, that is, the irreversible but confllictive process of the English reformation, is blurred and its internal contradictions set aside.
This paper analyzes those images in several media, with a special attention to the representation of Elizabeth I’s reign, in order to address the different strategies which enabled the different factions to draw the Tudor Queen either as a true protestant example versus the tainted Stuart monarch and his appointed heir, or as a scourge against those challenging the royal prerogative under the excuse of a Catholic threat.
By the end of the seventeenth century Elizabeth’s iconography was overloaded with political references, as many as political factions, hence her recurrent presence in the partizan struggle which charactrerized the years around the Popish Plot. We cannot forget nevertheless how during the same years Elizabeth became the protagonist of several sentimental fictions and plays in which the queen was viewed as a sentimental dramatic icon. This paper also tries to answer how these two iconographical constructions can be related and contextualized among the conflicting interests of the Stuart Court.

M.J. Mora. "To ‘speak in the phrases of a play’: Theatrical satire in The Woman Turned Bully (1675)". Icons and Iconoclasts: The Long Seventeenth Century. Univ. of Aberdeen: July 2006.

In The Woman Turned Bully—produced at the Dorset Garden Theatre in 1675— the title character flees her home in the country to escape an arranged marriage and arrives in London disguised as a man. In order to impersonate the town-gallant she takes her cues from the theatre, and models her behaviour and her speech on the comedies she has read; she adopts the impudent manners of the rake-hero and speaks using lines from plays like Etherege’s The Comical Revenge (1664), Shadwell’s Epsom Wells (1672), or Dryden’s An Evening’s Love (1668),  Marriage-a-la-Mode (1671) and The Assignation (1672). As she does so, the Woman Turned Bully briefly turns into a counterpart of The Rehearsal. The anonymous author uses these scenes to present an amusing satirical portrait of the new comedy of wit and to interrogate the relationship between the theatre and gentility.

M.J. Mora. "Theatre, Authorship, and Print: Negotiating Patronage in the Early Restoration Period". XXX AEDEAN Conference. Huelva: December 2006.

Although studies of the literary marketplace in the late seventeenth century tend to describe an increasing professionalization of the author and a decline of the patronage system, the theatre, especially in the early Restoration period, remained a field in which patronage was still a formidable force. Besides the income they could derive from the performance and, to a lesser extent, the publication of their works, playwrights also expected to gain a reputation they would convert into symbolic capital; shrewdly managed, this could open the doors to advancement. The present paper analyses a series of factors concerning the publication of play-texts in the 1660s and 1670s, which reveal a growing interest of the poets in asserting their authorship and in using dedications to invest their symbolic capital in a bid for patronage. The contrasting careers of Etherege and Dryden provide good examples of the ways in which Restoration playwrights attempt to negotiate this system.