Conduct Literature and the Politics of the Stage Controversy

1689-1728
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-1-83765-119-1
Verlag: Boydell & Brewer

Buch, Englisch, Band 55, 312 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 617 g

Reihe: Studies in Early Modern Cultural, Political and Social History

Examines the struggle between factions debating the morality and impact on public behaviour of the theatre following the Glorious Revolution, and the political significance of public feeling around this controversy.

In 1698 the Jacobite clergyman Jeremy Collier published his famous pamphlet in which he attacked a number of prominent playwrights on the grounds that their work contained profanity, blasphemy and indecency, and therefore was undermining public morality. He called for the closure of the stage, and in so doing sparked vigorous public debates that lasted for three decades. This book investigates the relationship between this Stage Controversy and the period of political instability evident in Britain in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution.

Instead of adopting the definition of the Stage Controversy as a pamphlet war and as a literary or moral event, Huang argues that in both pamphlets and plays, especially reform comedies, the discussions of conduct were employed to make political points. The book characterizes this controversy as a competition for public opinion and support, in which the stage controversialists sought to convince the audiences of the rightness of their interpretations of behaviour in drama. Contributing to debates about the nature of post-revolutionary political thinking and action, this work will be of great interest and use to scholars and students of the political, social and cultural history of late seventeenth-and early eighteenth-century England.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Huang, Chih-Hsin

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Theaterwissenschaft Theatergeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Strömungen & Epochen
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations

Introduction

Part I

Jeremy Collier's Stage Controversy and the Morality of Politics
1. Collier's Conduct Manuals on Drama, 1698-1708
2. Collier and Reform Comedy before the Stage Controversy
3. Rectification of Names: Collier's Conduct Writing on Political Behaviour, 1689-1696

Part II

Playwrights' Stage Controversy:

Reform Comedy and the Politics of Morality
4. Justifications for Revolution: Pseudo-Reform Comedy, 1698-1703
5. The Careless Husband (1704) and Post-1688 Ambivalence toward the Code of Conduct
6. Reform Comedians' Discourses on Contractual Obedience, 1705-1728
7. Moral Reform and Loyalty: Anti-Jacobite Alliance between Playwright and Moralist

Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Huang, Chih-Hsin
CHIH-HSIN HUANG is Assistant Professor of History at National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan