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When Margaret Cavendish published her first collection of dramatic work in 1662, she was keenly aware that none of her comedies or tragedies was unlikely to be acted, at least in her lifetime--but that did not deter her. “To those that do delight in scenes and wit / I dedicate my book,” she writes at the beginning of Plays.
As for the hard reality that her plays were not to be produced? She has an answer for that as well: “For all the time my plays a-making were, / My brain the stage, my thoughts were acting there.”
The Female Academy, the last play her 1662 collection, opens with a fait accompli—a group of “old matrons” has established an educational institution devoted exclusively to the education of young women, “a house wherein a company of young ladies are instructed by old matrons . . . to speak wittily and rationally, . . . to behave themselves handsomely, and to live virtuously.”
In this play, Cavendish presents the Female Academy as an institution created by women for women. The play also allows us to see the reactions of men, excluded from the Female Academy. Instead of ignoring the school, or wishing its young pupils well in their educational pursuits, men can’t stay away—they hang around and spy on what’s going on through “a large open grate” that allows them to hear the lectures being given inside. The play alternates scenes between the young women inside the Female Academy and the men in the outside world.
This new edition, designed for classroom use, will provide an ample introduction to Cavendish and her work, a carefully modernized text, with helpful glosses and notes, and a useful bibliography with references for further reading.
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Margaret Cavendish wrote and published nineteen plays in two separate volumes during her lifetime: the first of her collections, Plays, appeared in 1662, the second, Plays, Never before Printed, in 1668.
Cavendish was keenly aware that her plays were unlikely to be acted, at least in her lifetime, but that did not deter her. “To those that do delight in scenes and wit / I dedicate my book,” she writes in her dedication at the beginning of Plays.
As for the hard reality that her plays were not to be produced? She has an answer for that as well: “For all the time my plays a-making were, / My brain the stage, my thoughts were acting there.”
Today the most widely read of Cavendish’s plays is The Convent of Pleasure, from Plays, Never before Printed. In her provocative “comedy,” Cavendish presents us with the delightful Lady Happy, whose determined efforts to avoid men and marriage lead her to retreat into a convent dedicated to pleasure and provide Cavendish with the opportunity to expose the limited opportunities available to women in the late seventeenth century.
Now available, this edition, designed for classroom use, provides an ample introduction to Cavendish and her work, a carefully modernized text, with helpful glosses and notes, and a useful bibliography with references for further reading.
To purchase a copy, click here.
An edition of Mary Astell's 1694 feminist polemic is now available. The volume includes an introduction placing Astell's work in the early modern debate about women in early modern England, a carefully edited text prepared with student readers in mind, and a helpful bibliography with suggestions for further reading.
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Also newly available is an edition of Mary Astell's incisive analysis of the institution of marriage,Some Reflections upon Marriage (1700).
This is the second in the Saltar's Point Press series of classroom-focused texts and features a thoughtful introduction to Astell's life and work, focusing on Astell's anatomy of marriage, a carefully edited text prepared for student readers, and a helpful bibliography with suggestions for further reading.
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Now Available in Paperback
A new paperback edition of Reading Women's Worlds is now available.
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Also Available in Paperback
A paperback edition of Anne of France: Lessons for My Daughteris is now available from Boydell & Brewer.
The daughter of Louis XI, Anne of France (1461-1522) was one of the most powerful women of the fifteenth century. Referred to by her contemporaries as Madame la Grande, she controlled the government of France for eight years after the death of her father, guiding the kingdom through a series of crises. While ceding formal power to her brother Charles VIII in 1491, she remained an active and influential figure in France throughout her life. As the fifteenth century drew to a close, Anne composed a series of enseignements, or "lessons," for her daughter Suzanne of Bourbon. These instructions represent a distillation of her lifetime of reading and her own first-hand knowledge of the world--having managed to steer her own course successfully, she offered her daughter advice intended to help her negotiate the difficult passage of a woman in the world of politics. Her lessons carefully prepare Suzanne to act both circumspectly and politically; in drawing her portrait of an ideal princess, Anne presents a guidebook on governance for Suzanne, one not altogether unlike Machiavelli's more famous book of advice for a would-be prince, written some fifteen years later.
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This volume is part of Boydell & Brewer's Library of Medieval Women series. For more information about the series, click here.
The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (paper, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)
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Also Available
Debating Women, Politics, and Power in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
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Anne of France: Lessons for My Daughter (Boydell & Brewer, 2004)
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The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (hardbound, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002)
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Dangerous Talk and Strange Behavior: Women and Popular Resistance to the Reforms of Henry VIII (St. Martin's Press, 1996)
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Political Protest and Prophecy under Henry VIII (Boydell & Brewer, 1991)
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The Welles Anthology: (Ms. Rawlinson C.813): A Critical Edition (Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1991)
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