RECENT STUDIES IN SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT

Authors: shifflett, andrew¹; miller, ronald e.²

Source: English Literary Renaissance, Volume 36, Number 3, November 2006 , pp. 466-481(16)

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Abstract:

There has been much scholarship in recent years concerned with the masques that Davenant wrote in collaboration with Inigo Jones for Charles I and Henrietta Maria, the innovative “moral representations”—operas—that Davenant staged in his home and public theatres in the 1650s, and the revisions of Shakespearean plays that Davenant wrote for his own theatrical company, the Duke's Men, in the 1660s. While the hyper-canonization of Shakespeare still makes some critics reluctant to read Davenant's plays with the care they deserve, it is no longer possible simply to ignore his writings or to treat him as an over-achieving cavalier. The time is ripe for a new collected edition of Davenant's masques and plays—it would be the first since the 1870s—more scholarship devoted to Gondibert and his shorter poems, and an invigorated historical study of his intellectual and professional engagements. [A.S.]

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6757.2006.00090.x

Affiliations: 1: university of south carolina 2: presbyterian college

Publication date: 2006-11-01