Dreams in the late-seventeenth-century British theatre

Abstract

The British seventeenth century was a major turning point in the history of modernity, marking the gradual valorisation of scientific rationality. It was also an uproarious period when the relationship between religion and politics was being redefined, alongside transformative understandings of national stability. Under these circumstances, the significance of dreams was subject to vigorous debate and reinterpretation. While dreams were a central element in Christianity through its facilitation of communication between God and humanity, dreaming was also a practice that could generate anxiety for an early modern state seeking to establish boundaries between the divine and the secular in a prolonged period of political turmoil and instability.

This research focuses on the representation of dreams in late-seventeenth-century English drama. Working on John Dryden and Sir Robert Howard’s The Indian Queen written in the early Restoration period, Aphra Behn’s The Young King and Thomas Durfey’s The Injured Princess, both staged around the Exclusion Crisis of 1679-81, and William Congreve’s Love for Love produced a few years after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, this research aims to trace the ways in which dreams were reconstituted and negotiated on the public stage during a period of heightened political turmoil and transformation.