Revived with Care: John Fletcher’s Plays on the British Stage, 1885–2020

This book presents a ground-breaking, comprehensive study of the modern performance history of plays in the John Fletcher canon, excluding his collaborations with Shakespeare. It examines how seventeen of Fletcher’s plays have been interpreted in British productions. In addition, the book offers a consideration of the contexts in which these productions took place, from the early twentieth century ‘Elizabethan Revival’ to the more politicized theatrical cultures of the 1960s and beyond. Revived with Care opens a window on some of the theatrical developments of the past 135 years, in the context of radical changes in the presentation and reception of early modern drama, while for theatre practitioners it provides ideas and inspiration for exploring little-known but powerful plays in exciting new productions. The book will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners working in the field of theatre and performance studies.

Table of Contents:
Preface and acknowledgements; Notes on the text; Introduction: ‘Their care was good that did revive this play’; 1. ‘Bum-fiddled with a bastard’: misconstruing The Chances; 2. ‘You should have kept your legs close then’: misogynistic discourse in The Coxcomb and Bonduca; 3. ‘There is another way, if you could hit on’t’: sexual, social and political behaviours in The Scornful Lady and The Humorous Lieutenant; 4. ‘A poem and a play too!’: The Faithful Shepherdess and the possibility of poetic drama; 5. ‘What pretty new device is this?’: confronting the transgressive in The Maid’s Tragedy; 6. ‘Wooing and wiving? Hang it!’: performance, power and sexual politics in Rule a Wife and Have a Wife and The Wild-Goose Chase; 7. ‘Am I not your king? If ay, then am I not to be obeyed?’: Philaster, A King and No King and the depoliticizing of tragicomedy; 8. ‘You looked with my eyes when you took that man’: re-visioning The Maid’s Tragedy; 9. ‘A man of arms, and daunted with a lady?’: women in power and colonial excursions in The Island Princess, The Woman’s Prize and The Sea Voyage; 10. ‘Turn this man woman, or this woman man’: deconstructing gender in The Custom of the Country, Love’s Cure and The Woman Hater; Appendix 1: the plays in the John Fletcher canon; Appendix 2: British Fletcher productions 1885–2020; Bibliography; Index

About the Author :
Peter Malin is an independent scholar with a particular interest in the performance of early modern drama. A retired school teacher, his educational publications include A Level study guides on The Winter’s Tale, The Merchant of Venice, The Alchemist, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil. He has contributed theatre and book reviews to Early Theatre, ROMARD, Cahiers Élisabéthains and bloggingshakespeare.com. His article ‘"Entertaining Strangers": 50 Years of Shakespeare’s Contemporaries at the RSC’ appeared in Shakespeare (2012), and he contributed a chapter on the performance history of The Spanish Tragedy to the Arden ‘Critical Reader’ on the play (2016). He also writes poetry and short fiction; his story ‘End of Days’ was the winning entry in the 2017 English Heritage ghost story competition.

Review :
'What really shines out from [the] book is what a nurturing, energising and valuable enterprise putting on plays can be.The productions Malin discusses are fully and thoughtfully described and contextualised in a chatty and pungent style informed by an acute theatrical intelligence. In keeping with his title, Revived with Care, Malin treats the stage history of each of these plays with care, and anyone planning to produce any of them in future will need to read this book.' Lisa Hopkins in Cahiers Élisabéthains 106 (November 2021)