Mistress Davenant

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Writing during periods of dramatic social change, Maria Edgeworth and Elizabeth Gaskell were both attracted to the idea of radical societal transformation at the same time that their writings express nostalgia for a traditional, paternalistic ruling class. Julie Nash shows how this tension is played out especially through the characters of servants in short fiction and novels such as Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, Belinda, and Helen and Gaskell's North and South and Cranford. Servant characters, Nash contends, enable these writers to give voice to the contradictions inherent in the popular paternalistic philosophy of their times because the situation of domestic servitude itself embodies such inconsistencies. Servants, whose labor was essential to the economic and social function of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British society, made up the largest category of workers in England by the nineteenth century and yet were expected to be socially invisible. At the same time, they lived in the same houses as their masters and mistresses and were privy to the most intimate details of their lives. Both Edgeworth and Gaskell created servant characters who challenge the social hierarchy, thus exposing the potential for dehumanization and corruption inherent in the paternalistic philosophy. Nash's study opens up important avenues for future scholars of women's fiction in the nineteenth century.

Provides more than seven hundred biographies of Shakespeare's contemporaries.

TWO QUESTIONS HAVE ALWAYS PLAGUED HISTORIANS: HOW COULD Christopher Marlowe, a known spy and England's foremost playwright, be suspiciously murdered and quickly buried in an unmarked grave just days before he was to be tried for treason? HOW COULD William Shakespeare replace Marlowe as England's greatest playwright virtually overnight when Shakespeare had never written anything before and was merely an unknown actor? Historians have noted that the Bard of Stratford was better known at that time for holding horses for the gentry while they watched plays. The Shakespeare Conspiracy is a historical novel that intertwines the two mysteries and then puts the pieces together to offer the only possible resolution. The novel, a wild romp through gay 16th Century Elizabethan England, is a rapidly unfolding detective story filled with comedy, intrigue, murder and illicit love. And most importantly, all recorded events, persons, dates and documents are historically accurate. You will Get the scandalous view of the real William Shakespeare, with his sexual peccadilloes, illegitimate children and mistresses Wander through the gay world of Christopher Marlowe, when it was acceptable to be homosexual just so long as one stayed within one's own class as did Kings like James I, Edward II, and others Observe Inspector Henry Maunder matching wits with Christopher Marlowe's patron, Sir Thomas Walsingham one cleverly hiding the facts and other cunningly discovering the truth Watch the arguments unfold, showing the actual reasons that many historians believe that it could only have been Christopher Marlowe writing all those great works. It's a tale of murder, mayhem and manhunts in the underbelly of London as the Black Plague scourges the country and the greatest conspiracy plot of all time is hatched. It's The Shakespeare Conspiracy!