Thomas Killigrew and the Seventeenth-Century English Stage: New Perspectives ed. by Philip Major (review)

In his Introduction to this collected volume of eight chapters, editor Philip Major suggests that while a ‘major anniversary often provides the stimulus for a renewed focus on an early modern literary figure, neglected or otherwise … there are even more compelling reasons than the 2012 quarter-centenary of his birth to justify a reassessment of the life and work of Thomas Killigrew’ (p. 1). Indeed, Major identifies several reasons for this ‘reassessment’, including his lasting legacy as ‘a strangely elusive figure’. Accordingly, he recognises the ‘strong suspicion is that – hitherto – we have failed … adequately to take his measure’ (p. 1).

Major and his fellow authors, Eleanor Collins, Victoria Bancroft, David Roberts, Karen Britland, Marcus Nevitt, J. P. Vander Motten, and Geoffrey Smith, have recognised a distinct lack of literature dedicated to this intriguing Restoration figure, noting that the most recent detailed study of Killigrew’s plays is William T. Reich’s edition of Claricilla in 1980 and the most recent biography of Killigrew was first published in 1930 by Alfred Harbage. So the question remains: Why does so little exist about this influential figure?

Major asserts that ‘[o]ne explanatory factor for the comparative dearth of scholarship on Killigrew [a royalist and an ‘underhanded and unscrupulous businessman’ during the English Revolution] is the self-evident imbalance within the historiography of seventeenth-century British studies in favour of parliamentarians, revolutionaries and sectaries’. Killigrew’s ‘unfashionableness’ (p. 2) sealed his fate and he remains a Restoration figure to whom relatively little attention has been paid.

This collection is thus successful in its attempt to contribute to and update the discussion on Killigrew. It provides chapters which range from explorations of his plays, including The Prisoners, Claricilla, The Parson’s Wedding, Thomaso, The Rover, and The Pilgrim, to discussions on his ‘undoubted influence on English culture as a courtier, exile, playwright [and] Restoration theatre manager’, favourite of the King, and beneficiary of court patronage, as well as Killigrew’s ‘reputation as one of the most colourful characters of the mid-seventeenth century’ (p. 1).

Major and his fellow authors revitalise the discussion on Killigrew, closing (if only by a few more centimetres) the door on Killigrew’s (negative) legacy and opening the door for more exciting research into the more important topic of his influences on Restoration theatre.