Early Women Dramatists, 1550-1800

Book excerpt: This is a comprehensive survey of women's drama between the Renaissance and the end of the 18th century, assessing the plays' characteristic features and the ruptures in the text that indicate the writers' precarious social and artistic position and the ambiguous stances to their own creativity and sex. Chapters are devoted to individual writers as well as to general developments in specific periods. The most significant plays are analysed in detail and related to the male literary canon of the time in order to stress both their originality and the existence of an, albeit tentative, female literary canon.