Recent Articles*

ADDISON

Miller, Stephen. "The Strange Career of Joseph Addison," SR, 122.4 (2014), 650–660.

Intended for general readers, this essay offers a range of positive comments from eighteenth-century admirers to show Addison's high reputation as a moralist, stylist, and thinker. Why, then, has Addison more recently received mostly faint or grudging praises? What changed his reputation so radically?

Mr. Miller points an accusing finger at influential twentieth-century critics, particularly T. S. Eliot, who saw Addison as facile and smug, complacent and comfortably middle-class. He goes on to argue recuperatively that Addison deserves to be read and appreciated in the context of his highly politicized and contentious times. He was ahead of his contemporaries in many of his interests, particularly in his understanding of the marketplace economy, and his various writings, especially his Spectator essays, reflected his important role as a polite, reasonable, and calming presence amidst an unsettling and dangerous cacophony of voices. Credit where credit is due, then.

BEHN

Adcock, Rachel. "'Jack Presbyter in His Proper Habit': Subverting Whig Rhetoric in Aphra Behn's Roundheads (1682)," WoWr, 22 (2015), 34–55.

In late 1681 or early 1682, during the political chaos of the Exclusion crisis and the Titus Oates debacle, The Roundheads was part of "a propaganda battle between Whig and Tory sympathizers," with Behn adapting John Tatham's The Rump (1660) to make her points. She uses the ghost of Hewson, for example, to introduce the play, mocking the "Presbittery" that he had so strongly supported in the revolt that led to the execution of the king and the founding of the Commonwealth. Behn focuses on the last days of the Commonwealth, as did Tatham, using satire and farce to reveal its leaders as clinging to the wealth extracted from the Tories, along with the lasciviousness with which they sought Tory women—or any women. What may appear to be a contemporizing of an old play is not so simple, as Ms. Adcock illustrates.

It is rare to encounter a study of any of Behn's plays that covers as much ground so quickly, an intense and concise study of text, context, and subtext. Ms. Adcock clarifies the chaotic political scene that provoked the writing of the play, providing illustrations that serve her argument well, such as Stephen College's infamous "Solemn Mock Procession of the Pope, Cardinalls, Jesuits … November ye 17^th, 1679." Ms. Adcock contextualizes both Hewson's prologue and Behn's dedication to illuminate Behn's appeal to the dedicatee, Henry Fitzroy, the Duke of Grafton (one of the King's sons by Barbara Villiers Palmer, Lady Castlemaine) for his protection against the "Legions" that have been "drawn down … upon its head, for its Loyalty."

Turning to the play itself, Ms. Adcock focuses especially on Ananias Gogle, the hypocritical Puritan preacher, who grasps gold and female flesh with equal rapacity. However, establishing that Behn believed the "Whig non-conformists" presented a greater threat to the social fabric than did the Jesuits, Ms. Adcock reads the end of the play as less than a celebration of Tory victory. With chilling ambiguity, Lady Lambert bids farewell to her "dear Mansion" and all "hopes of Royalty," but she nonetheless accepts Loveless and his newly restored fortunes, whereas Lady Desbro' accepts only the "Protection" of Freeman. The suggestion that Tory victors are little better than Whig losers, that Tory greed and sexual aggressiveness match that of the Whigs, ends a play that has in its fifth act a parliament of women who, alas, had clearly hoped for a different world. The clarity of Ms. Adcock's thesis, the cogency of her argument, and the precision of her supporting evidence combine into not just a first-rate study of Behn's Roundheads but also model scholarship and presentation.

________

Ballaster, Ros...