Performance, Performativity, and Identity in Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure

Abstract

Critics of Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure frequently tackle the question of the play’s genre, debating whether it is a stage play or a closet drama. Yet when the play is examined through theories of performativity, the clear distinction between the two categories becomes less clear. Through the play’s rapidly shifting spaces and the characters’ varying gender and sexual identities, the play highlights the instability of all performing bodies, material or not. The play also reveals the proximity of the terms “performance” and “performativity,” terms often opposed, by both flaunting theatricality and questioning the stability of its own bodies.