Chapter 7 - Seventeenth-Century Printed Theatre

Summary

Derval Conroy concludes the focus in the collection on the seventeenth century with an examination of the printed text. The numerous accompanying elements included in printed plays – peritexts – were key to the reader’s reception, argues Conroy. Concentrating on two of these, dedications and prefaces/addresses, and in the light of recent scholarship regarding theatre and female agency – women as protagonists, dramatists, readers, spectators and patrons – Conroy accounts for the vital role played by peritexts in the economy of exchange, patronage, criticism and creation which characterized the early modern theatre world. After an examination of Françoise Pascal’s titlepages, her chapter focuses on how dedications to women validated women’s roles as cultural agents, creating spaces for the female reader–spectator–critic. Consideration is then given to prefaces by the women dramatists Françoise Pascal, Mme Ulrich, Catherine Bernard and Marie-Anne Barbier, and how they use these printed spaces to defend their work, their foray into the public space of playwriting, or more broadly their dramatic vision.