Synopses & Reviews
My dissertation, 'Free Speaking Cartoons' The Rise of Political Prints and Drama in Seventeenth-Century England, examines the co-emergence of political cartoons and a topically inflected political drama in seventeenth-century England. It focuses on the reigns of James I and Charles I, but also encompasses the protectorship of Oliver Cromwell, and the reign of Charles II. The central claim of my dissertation is that the emergence of seventeenth-century political engravings depended upon the preexistence of a national mythology, the terms of which shifted over the course of the seventeenth century, but which was generally characterized by an interconnected discourse of providentialism, anti-Catholicism, and apocalypticism. I see the importance of such an investigation in terms of its intervention into recent historiography on oppositional discourse in seventeenth-century England. While historians and literary critics have been quick to see oppositional thinking in any seventeenth-century text that was critical of the current political establishment or religious orthodoxy, it is important to be cautious about such claims. In my dissertation, I see political prints and drama of the seventeenth century as commenting upon political and religious issues of the day, but often in a reflective and retrospective context that has less to do with actively shaping public opinion, or changing government policy, than with crystallizing, comprehending, or historicizing such issues. Over the course of the seventeenth century, rival groups such as Puritans and Anglicans, Royalists and Republicans, turned to providence as the central metaphor in advocating their superiority to their rivals. But what mattered most, it seems, was not revolution, but rather reaction, a desire to stabilize traditional hierarchies rather than to subvert them. The appeal to providence was, for the most part, a sincere one, an effort to validate one's cause over that of one's enemies and a desire to bring England into accordance with divine will. I make these claims through chapter discussions that compare political prints and drama, focusing on political prints and their relationship to Thomas Middleton's A Game at Chess (1624), Ben Jonson's The Magnetic Lady (1633), James Shirley's The Cardinal (1641), The Famous Tragedie of Charles I(1649), and John Milton's Samson Agonistes (1672). In a brief Afterword I look forward to the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis, analyzing the changes in political prints and drama that occurred at the end of the century.