Crowd control in restoration tragedy. Issue 3 (3rd July 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Mierowsky, Marc
• Is Part Of: Seventeenth century. Volume 32:Issue 3(2017)
• Page Start: 269
• Page End: 295
• Publication Date: 2017-07-03
• Subjects: History of emotions -- restoration tragedy -- Aristotle -- Tory reaction -- John Dryden -- Thomas Rymer -- Thomas Otway -- Nahum Tate; Seventeenth century -- Periodicals; History, Modern -- 17th century -- Periodicals; 909.605
• DOI: 10.1080/0268117X.2017.1289859
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0268-117X

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article traces the development of heroic drama into a more affective mode of tragedy. Using contemporary reappraisals of Aristotelian catharsis as an optic for this generic development, it shows that the emotions involved in the love plots and melodramatic endings that distinguished affective tragedy from its forebears were thought to have a normative ethical content as well as a purgative effect. This view poses a challenge to the accepted wisdom that affective tragedies neutralised or avoided political controversy by divesting audiences of their judgement. With particular reference to Nahum Tate's The Ingratitude of the Commonwealth and Thomas Otway's Caius Marius, two plays written at the cusp of the transition described here, this article demonstrates the role pathos played in granting audience members access to one another's subjectivity. It makes the case that the emotional response to such overtly sentimental tragedies was intended as a means of modelling the intersubjective relations at the heart of all political communities, whose make-up and power were crucial points of contention in the period's ongoing disputes over sovereignty.