Chapter 7: The Good Old Cause.

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  • Source:
    Reading Between the Lines. 1993, p207-271. 65p.
  • Additional Information
    • Subject Terms:
    • Abstract:
      The chapter presents information on dramatist Nathaniel Lee's play "Lucius Junius Brutus," which promoted the values of republicanism. The article includes a speech which was spoken on the London stage in 1680, for less than a week, before the play that promoted these values was suppressed. Nathaniel Lee's play was performed in December 1680 for either three or six days and was shut down by order of the Lord Chamberlain, for reasons that are obvious if one recognizes the tensions of the historical moment and the contemporary significance of the ancient history that Lee was here resuscitating. This play is not eccentric. Rather, it is just the tip of the iceberg. Many writers in early modern England, far more than we have been told, shared the convictions of that speaker, or at least would not have found them laughable. They possessed, or, more accurately, developed, an economical vocabulary for representing the central questions of political and social thought, a set of terms that, when any or each of them was introduced, immediately invoked an entire agenda.