Virgin or Wife? St Dorothy's Legend on the Late Restoration Stage

MIKYŠKOVÁ, Anna. Virgin or Wife? St Dorothy's Legend on the Late Restoration Stage. American and British Studies Annual. Pardubice: University of Pardubice, 2019, vol. 12, December, p. 32-43. ISSN 1803-6058.

Basic information

• Original name: Virgin or Wife? St Dorothy's Legend on the Late Restoration Stage
• Authors: MIKYŠKOVÁ, Anna (203 Czech Republic, guarantor, belonging to the institution).
• Edition: American and British Studies Annual, Pardubice, University of Pardubice, 2019, 1803-6058.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Article in a journal
• Field of Study: 60206 Specific literatures
• Country of publisher: Czech Republic
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• WWW: Abstrakt článku on-line
• RIV identification code: RIV/00216224:14210/19:00108043
• Organization unit: Faculty of Arts
• Keywords in English: Early modern and Restoration drama; adaptation; theatre; Benjamin Griffin; Philip Massinger; Thomas Dekker; St Dorothy; martyr; comedy of manners; dramatic decorum; rhetorical convention
• Tags: rivok
• Tags: International impact, Reviewed

Abstract

Although the early modern and the Restoration periods in England mark two distinct theatrical traditions, theproduction of English Restoration playwrights was to a great extent characterized by a conscious reliance on the legacy of their early modern precursors, which resulted in the high number of adaptations of old plays written and staged well into the 18th century. The canons of the two dramatic traditions are, thus, intertwined, and their parallel study provides valuable insight into the then dramatic conventions and the development of English drama in general. The present paper analyses the late Restoration adaptation Injured Virtue, or The Virgin Martyr (1714) by Benjamin Griffin and compares it with its early modern source, the tragedy The Virgin Martyr (1620) by Philip Massinger and Thomas Dekker. After addressing Griffin’s motives for choosing this particular Jacobean play, the paper discusses the most significant differences between the two texts and argues that Griffin’s alterations in the list of dramatis personae and his rhetorical transformation of the play’s main protagonists (especially that of the story’s heroine, St Dorothy) lead to the inevitable conclusion that, with the two periods in questions and their dramatic conventions being so different, not every Restoration adaptation managed to translate the early modern material successfully.

Links

• GA19-07494S, research and development project: Name: Anglická divadelní kultura 1660-1737

Investor: Czech Science Foundation