Rehearsals of the Modern

This volume aims to contribute its share in highlighting how the drama of the Restoration period is a shaping discourse in the construction of modernity. The questioning of authority and, consequently, of agency are ‘rehearsed’ on their chosen ground, the stage, thus denying oblivion of the mid-century experience of radical questioning. A critically fertile, multifaceted view of the Restoration theatre is offered by essays on comedy (Behn’s challenges to progressivist ideas of modernity; Wilkins’s anti-modern language project sabotaged by the libertine comedy; Congreve’s anti-authoritarian use of the Plautine ancestry), post-1688 pamphlet tragicomedy, tragedy (Samson Agonistes, Oedipus and their daring use of classic and biblical sources), Shakespeare adaptations (Tate’s regressive failure, Richard II, here textually exposed, and his tragicomic success, King Lear, led back to its cultural context), and on some of its outward, even antipodean, resonances (of Behn in Austen, Rochester in Byron, Farquhar in T. Keneally).