The purposes of playing on the post civil war stage: The politics of affection in William Davenant's dramatic theory

Abstract

This article situates William Davenant's writings on dramatic poetry from the 1650s within the context of political debates about the role of the passions in effecting political action. His proposal to the Interregnum government for the revival of the dramatic arts in the kingdom's turbulent capital, as well as his preface to his epic poem Gondibert, reflect and negotiate contemporary seventeenth-century anxieties over the affective dimensions of political obligation prompted by the transformations of ideas of sovereignty during the English Civil Wars. Davenant's discussions of dramatic poetry's wider civic functions can thus also be read as contributions to post-civil war redefinitions of public government and the proper emotional constitution of a stable civic order.© W. S. Maney & Son Ltd 2014.