Description
The volume opens with background essays on the history of women in theater, including the first appearance of actresses on the stage, the earliest professional women playwrights, and their relationships with critics, audiences, and the theater manager David Garrick. Contributors then focus on individual playwrights, from Aphra Behn and Mary Pix to Hannah Cowley and Elizabeth Inchbald, and explore these women's political, protofeminist, critical, and moralist agendas. Discussions of Frances Burney and Eliza Haywood, authors of both novels and plays, raise the question of genre. Comparative approaches offer ways of pairing plays in the classroom, following themes such as masquerade and cross-dressing through the works of female dramatists and those of their male counterparts. Other essays present methods for using these writers and their works in British literature and history courses, surveys of drama and theater history, and introductions to women's literature.
Book Information
ISBN 9781603290838
Author Bonnie Nelson
Format Paperback
Page Count 478
Imprint Modern Language Association of America
Publisher Modern Language Association of America
Weight(grams) 673g