Las primeras humoristas del teatro inglés: comedia y género a finales del siglo XVII

Abstract

Las primeras humoristas del teatro inglés: comedia y género a finales del siglo XVII analyses the humour in the comedies and tragicomedies by the English women playwrights who wrote at the end of the seventeenth century. Between 1669 and 1706, seven women wrote comedies and/or tragicomedies intended to be performed on the public stage: Frances Boothby, Aphra Behn, Elizabeth Polwhele, Ariadne, Mary Delarivière Manley, Mary Pix and Catharine Trotter. In spite of the differences among the abovementioned playwrights, they have something in common: in their works, humour plays a very important role. Because of this, it has been decided to call them the first humorists of the English drama. Moreover, they were the first women who wrote plays which were intended to be performed professionally on the public stage. Selling their ideas to be exposed publicly was regarded as prostitution at the time when they developed their activity. Moreover, it is compulsory to pay attention to the ideas about gender which were included in their works and to the fact that their humour is based on aspects related to gender identities. As a matter of fact, it is possible to establish a relationship between comedy and gender, because humour and women were regarded as completely opposite terms. Traditional humour belittles, even despises, women and, therefore, the fact that these women wrote comedies in the seventeenth century makes us curious, above all because of the features they enriched their humour with. This curiosity increases when we found out the contradictory reactions towards their works: these playwrights succeeded but they also had to defend themselves from the hard criticism towards their task. In order to analyse their humor, we have studied all the comedies and tragicomedies written by women between 1669 and 1706.