Privacy, Playreading, and Women's Closet Drama, 1550-1700

Marta Straznicky offers a detailed historical analysis of the relationship between early modern women's closet plays and the culture of reading. Straznicky reveals that these works, by Elizabeth Cary and Margaret Cavendish, among others, were part of an alternative dramatic tradition, an elite and private literary culture that was intellectually superior to, and politically more radical than, commercial drama.