In Gender, Theatre and the Origins of Criticism, Marcie Frank explores the theoretical and literary legacy of John Dryden to a number of prominent women writers of the time. Frank examines the pre-eminence of gender, sexuality and the theatre in Dryden's critical texts that are predominantly rewritings of the work of his own literary precursors - Ben Jonson, Shakespeare and Milton. She proposes that Dryden develops a native literary tradition that is passed on as an inheritance to his heirs - Aphra Behn, Catharine Trotter, and Delarivier Manley - as well as their male contemporaries. Frank describes the development of criticism in the transition from a court-sponsored theatrical culture to one oriented toward a consuming public, with very different attitudes to gender and sexuality. This study also sets out to trace the historical origins of certain aspects of current criticism - the practices of paraphrase, critical self-consciousness and performativity.

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English Dramatick Opera, 1661–1706 is the first comprehensive examination of the distinctively English form known as "dramatick opera", which appeared on the London stage in the mid-1670s and lasted until its displacement by Italian through-composed opera in the first decade of the eighteenth century. Andrew Walkling argues that, while the musical elements of this form are crucial to its definition and history, the origins of the genre lie principally in a tradition of spectacular stagecraft that first manifested itself in England in the mid-1660s as part of a hitherto unidentified dramatic sub-genre, to which Walkling gives the name "spectacle-tragedy". Armed with this new understanding, the book explores a number of historical and interpretive issues, including the physical and rhetorical configurations of performative spectacle, the administrative maneuverings of the two "patent" theatre companies, the construction and deployment of the technologically advanced Dorset Garden Theatre in 1670–71, the critical response to generic, technical, and ideological developments in Restoration drama, and the shifting balance between machine spectacle and song-and-dance entertainment throughout the later decades of the seventeenth century, including in the dramatick operas of Henry Purcell. This study combines the materials and methodologies of music history, theatre history, literary studies, and bibliography to fashion an entirely new approach to the history of spectacular and musical drama on the English Restoration stage. This book serves as a companion to the Routledge publication Masque and Opera in England, 1656–1688 (2017).

American, British, and Australian scholars of English gathered at Yale University in October 2000 to mark the tercentenary of the British writer's death. Their 14 essays explore such aspects as modernity and exclusion in his The Spanish Fryar, his translation of Juvenal's Sixth Satire, and his Hamlet as an unwritten masterpiece. Distributed by Associated University Presses. Annotation c2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Table of Contents AMBOYNA. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE LORD CLIFFORD OF CHUDLEIGH [ 1]. PROLOGUE. DRAMATIS PERSONÆ. AMBOYNA. ACT II. SCENE I. ACT III. SCENE I. SCENE II. SCENE III.—The Castle. EPITHALAMIUM. THE SEA-FIGHT. SCENE II. SCENE III. EPILOGUE STATE OF INNOCENCE, FALL OF MAN. THE STATE OF INNOCENCE, and c. TO HER ROYAL HIGHNESS, THE DUCHESS [ 1]. TO MR DRYDEN, ON HIS POEM OF PARADISE. THE AUTHOR'S APOLOGY FOR HEROIC POETRY, AND POETIC LICENCE. STATE OF INNOCENCE, FALL OF MAN. SCENE II.—Paradise. AURENG-ZEBE. AURENG-ZEBE. PROLOGUE. DRAMATIS PERSONÆ. AURENG-ZEBE. ACT I. SCENE I. ACT II. SCENE I. ACT III. SCENE I. ACT IV. SCENE I. ACT V. SCENE I. EPILOGUE ALL FOR LOVE; THE WORLD WELL LOST. ALL FOR LOVE. PREFACE. PROLOGUE. DRAMATIS PERSONÆ. ALL FOR LOVE; WORLD WELL LOST. ACT II. SCENE I. ACT III. SCENE I. ACT IV. SCENE I. ACT V. SCENE I. EPILOGUE.