"'Tis Writ by Me": Massinger's "The Roman Actor" and the Politics of Reception in the English Renaissance Theatre

Abstract

The political importance of theatre and spectacle in the English Renaissance has been well established.1 What remains unsettled, however, is the political role played by the drama. A number of critics have recently argued that, far from symbolically confirming political orthodoxy and reinforcing conformism, the drama radically opposed the Stuarts' claims to absolute sovereignty.2 Massinger's The Roman Actor has figured prominently in this view. Martin Butler and Annabel Patterson argue that Massinger intentionally revises the past to reflect topically the anxieties of the present. Despite censorship, readers could apply Massinger's play (and other drama as well) analogically, allegorize, and reencode it as a form of sociopolitical criticism ideologically aligned with Parliamentary and Puritan opposition to the monarchy.3