Judith Shakespeare's Reading: Teaching The Concealed Fancies

Abstract

IN MY FINAL-YEAR OPTION COURSE ON NON-SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA, titled of Blood, I have always had a free hand in choice of texts and teaching methods; but the course lasts only ten weeks, and so strong are the claims of Middleton, Marlowe, Webster, and my own primary interest, Ford, that I have thus far stayed firmly within the canonical in my selection of authors. This year, however, various factors have come together to change that and to lead me to include a female-authored text, The Concealed Fancies (c. 1645), written by two sisters, Lady Jane Cavendish and Lady Elizabeth Brackley. In the first place, there is students' own growing interest in recovering writing by women, fed in part by its increasing presence in other areas of the degree course; second, there have been immense advances in making the texts available, both in print and in performance. The Northern Renaissance Seminar recently spawned a sister group, Women and Dramatic Production 1570-1670, which has staged excellent full-scale productions of both Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedy of Mariam (directed by Stephanie Wright at the Bradford Alhambra Studio and performed in modern dress) and The Concealed Fancies (directed by Alison Findlay and Jane Milling at Bretton Hall College, Wakefield), as well as selected scenes from Margaret Cavendish's The Convent of Pleasure (directed by Bill Pinner and initiated by Gweno Williams, at the University College of Ripon and York St. John). ' The Northern Renaissance Seminar Press is also launching a series of affordable editions which will include Mariam and The Convent of Pleasure, and both Mariam and The Concealed Fancies have recently been published by Routledge in S. P. Cerasano and Marion Wynne-Davies's Renaissance Drama by Women: Texts and Documents.2