Playing Politics

This study focuses on the 1670–71 season in the Restoration playhouses, an exciting and formative moment in theatrical and political history. The year proved to be difficult and damaging to King Charles II, as political, religious, and personal matters provoked controversy and disquiet, and the country teetered on the brink of major constitutional problems. My research sets drama against this backdrop. Theatrical records for this period are patchy and, for the most part, frustratingly incomplete: this book does not attempt to reconstruct the day-to-day operations of the playhouses, but rather it uses the available evidence of the extant new and revived plays we know (or believe) to have been performed in the 1670–71 theatrical season, and argues that this was the period in which serious and far-reaching political and dramatic questions began to be seriously asked and (tentatively) answered.