Publication details
Romeo and Juliet in the Midst of Early 18th-Century English Party Politics
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2019 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Hradec Králové Journal of Anglophone Studies |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | http://pdf.uhk.cz/hkjas/pi/pdf/vol6nr1_2019.pdf#page=80 |
| Keywords | William Shakespeare; Benjamin Griffin; John Sturmy; Susanna Centlivre; Romeo and Juliet; early-modern English drama; Restoration drama; adaptation |
| Description | In the early years of the so-called Whig Supremacy (1714–1760), London theatres became, once again, exceedingly political, responding to the general climate of rivalry between the ruling Whigs and the discredited Tories and the principles for which these parties stood. In the early 1720s, a wave of plays appeared setting the well-known story of unhappy lovers from opposing families within the framework of the then current political animosities. To an extent, each of these more or less openly referred to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, which was then known to London audiences primarily through Thomas Otway’s highly political adaptation The History and Fall of Caius Marius (1679). This paper will focus on three such works – Benjamin Griffin’s Whig and Tory (1720), John Sturmy’s The Compromise (1723), and Susanna Centlivre’s The Artifice (1722) – observing how they reflect early 18th-century English party politics and how their respective authors worked with the conventions of the unhappy love story to express their own (or their theatres’) political sympathies. |
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