Description: This volume presents three plays by women that were written in specific household contexts and survive in distinctive handwritten copies dating from their authors' lifetimes. Care is taken in the introductions, notes, and apparatus to make the plays accessible to non-specialist readers while also preserving early modern orthography, punctuation, and manuscript practices. Each play is presented in an edited old-spelling text and set within its literary, biographical, and theatrical context. The volume as a whole foregrounds the early modern household as a uniquely productive setting for women's theatrical and literary activity.
Volume 66 in the Other Voice in Early Modern Europe - The Chicago SeriesBrief description:
Marta Straznicky is Professor of English Literature at Queen's University. She is the author of Privacy, Playreading, and Women's Closet Drama, 1550-1700 (2004), and editor of The Book of the Play: Playwrights, Stationers, and Readers in Early Modern England (2006) and Shakespeare's Stationers: Studies in Cultural Bibliography (2013).
Review Quotes: This is an excellent volume, providing a scholarly, thoroughly annotated edition of three fascinating manuscript plays by early modern women writers: Mary Wroth's Loves Victorie (based on the Huntington manuscript), edited by Marta Straznicky, and Jane Cavendish and Elizabeth Brackley's A Pastorall and The concealed Fansyes, edited by Sara Mueller. All three plays have begun to attract considerable scholarly interest, but readers who are new to them will be struck by how lively and indeed performable they are. Based on sound texts and detailed introductions, this volume will ensure that these plays will receive the ongoing attention they deserve.
--Paul Salzman,
Emeritus Professor, La Trobe University; Professorial Fellow, University of Newcastle (Australia)