OVERVIEW: DRAMA OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY AND THE CLOSET DRAMATIST 

 The custody battle over theatre invoked in the sixteenth century continued to shape the role of drama and the dramatist in the seventeenth century. With only three legal professional theatres existing in London, hopes of becoming a professional playwright in England were slim, nor was the position considered honorable. Professional playwrights were generally regarded, according to Alfred Harbage in his book titled Cavalier Drama, as "gifted plebians" and ranked below poets. He writes, "talent and education, unpoised by money to buy a clerical living or influence to attain some general form of civil employment, often spelled a career as a playwright. Such was the way of [Thomas] Lodge who, about 1589, determined 'To write no more of that which shame doth grow,' and subsequently became a physician" (Harbage 22). Common playwrights such as Lodge were seen as prostitutes of a nobler art and often abandoned the craft for other, more respected occupations.  

 While great playwrights such as Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson were revered by the court and its constituents, they were not respected on the same level of nobility. Neither did professional playwrights escape the scathing criticisms of religious moralists. The infamous William Prynne, author of Histriomaxis, the Players Scourge, or Actors Tragedie had this to say of the professional playwright,"...that the Profession of Playpoets, of Stage Players; together with the penning, acting, and frequenting of Stage-playes are unlawful, infamous, and misbeseeming Christians.."(Bentley 7). Stage-plays and stage poets, then, because of their low status and lack of demand, were not the mainstay of dramatic literature in the seventeenth century.  

 Moreso, the drama served as a function of imaginative literature rather than of the stage. Amateur playwrights, university students, poets and intellectuals engaged in writing drama as a form of poetry, never intending their material to be staged, but to be read and published as literature. This notion was furthered during the Commonwealth period (1649-1660) when England, without a king and ruled by Puritans, closed its theatres. While dramatic literature continued to be produced, it was consumed as literature and not considered performable. The genre became known as "closet drama" because it was a private versus public art. Religious drama, when written, was most likely closet drama not intended or permitted to be performed. Court influences in closet drama would continue to impact the development of drama into the Restoration period. The trend, although not acclaimed for its artistic merit, made a lasting impression on the history and development of theatre and is the seventeenth century's unique contribution to dramatic literature.  

 Closet drama matured during the rule of King Charles I and his queen Catholic queen Henrietta Maria. The royal couple were theatre enthusiasts, Henrietta herself a dancer when she lived in Bourbon, France, frequented public theatre and the company of professional thespians. Under this monarchy, much to the chagrin of moralists like Prynne, it became fashionable for courtiers to write dramatic poetry: "Exquisites of the Household, often secure in the reversion of great estates, began to busy themselves with acts and scenes, willing to expose their brain progeny not at court theatricals only, but in the playhouses and on the bookstalls of London" (Harbage 21). Closet drama continued even after its benefactor, King Charles, was impeached and beheaded by the House of Commons in 1649. During the Puritan Commonwealth from 1649-1660 theatres were closed and closet drama proliferated, surviving even after King Charles II restored the throne and reopened the theatres.  

Closet drama reflected changing themes in English drama and society. Prior to the Reformation, religion and salvation figured predominantly in dramatic thematics. Censorship by the state and a rising noble class, however, diminished religious theatre, replacing it with themes of domestic, political and intellectual life-- the concerns of the court. The new theatre reflected a decadent, sentimental, romantic, somewhat trivial culture. Dramatic literature served as a venue for individuals to display their wit and intellect versus shaping a moral culture as it had a century before. Typical themes of closet drama included political and military strife; love that conquered social barriers; love triangles; satire of character types; and cross dressing, particularly women dressing as men. The last example points to a rising sense of feminism among female dramatists. The feminist trend can be attributed to factors such as powerful role models like Queen Elizabeth and Queen Henrietta Maria; the education of noble women; and a strong female patronage --women comprised a large percentage of the closet drama author- and readership (Harbage 39). Closet drama produced a new form of theatre, no longer espousing religious polemic, but entertaining audiences with romantic, satiric and feminist social plays.  

Although the religious nature of plays had waned, dramatic literature of the seventeenth century could not avoid being affected by the changing religious culture of England. At the start of the century, closet dramatists such as Elizabeth Cary experimented with the Roman Senecan models of tragedy. As the Protestant influence over theatre increased, closet dramatists began to use the model of Greek romance. This change from a Roman to a Greek model reflects the changing religious culture from a Catholic to Protestant majority. Glynne Wickham writes: "This followed directly from the fact that Latin was the traditional language of the Roman Catholic Church and Rome....For Protestant Reformers, Latin was the language of the Pope and thus of Antichrist, idolatry and superstition: Greek, however, as the language in which the gospels had first been written, was the source of truth. Thus under a Protestant monarch...Elizabeth I--to espouse the cause of Latin carried the risk of being accused of heresy, sedition and even treason"(Wickham 114). While this change in dramatic form was not the conscious result of political mandate, it reflects the role religious culture played on an increasingly secular art form.  

It would be a mistake to assume that religion had lost its influence over drama or that playwrights avoided religious themes in the seventeenth century due to political mandates and censorship. In fact, dramatists were still in the habit of telling religious tales and creating religious characters. For example, Elizabeth Cary wrote The Tragedy of Mariam in c.1602-1604 and Margaret Cavendish wrote The Religiousin c.1662. Instead, each playwright treated religious themes according to the religious atmosphere in which they wrote. A close reading of both The Tragedy of Mariamand The Religiouswill trace the significant and evolving influence religion had on the playwrights and the dramatic form.  

 A comparative study between Elizabeth Cary and Margaret Cavendish is appropriate in that both are important figures in the history of seventeenth century closet drama. Both women were married to prominent men and belonged to the upper class. The primary concern or argument in both their work was the question of a woman's role in marriage, particularly a Christian marriage, and the female pursuit for autonomy. While Cary in The Tragedy of Mariamsupported the idea of a woman's choice to divorce, Cavendish went a step farther to suggest that it was best a woman never marry, but remain chaste. Religion also figured prominently in the lives of both women. Both suffered exile because of their Catholic sympathies, Cary at the hands of her Protestant husband and Cavendish at the hands of Protestant revolutionaries in the civil war. Perhaps most importantly, both women found solace in their exile by writing. During their exiles, both women were able to examine the world from which they were banished and write about that world. In regard to Cavendish, Anna Battigelli writes, "As a writer, she identifies herself consistently throughout her work as an exile,transforming her comparative social isolation into a rhetorical stance, a position of advantage from which to address her world....and even critique her world authoritatively" (Battigelli 7) . One may assume Cary worked similarly in her isolation. In studying Cary's The Tragedy of Mariam and Cavendish's The Religious,the modern reader may gain insight on what it meant in the seventeenth century to be a female dramatist writing on social issues in a society rife with religious conflict. Examining the relationship between religion and drama in the seventeenth century, it would appear that although religious drama was banned on the public stage, private closet dramatists retained religious perspectives in their works, although making them secondary to other social themes.