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Restoration Drama Analysis

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The discourse in Restoration drama has an extreme change and has not followed the discourse of the Renaissance drama. In Shakespeare 's The Tempest when Prospero told Miranda to go to the Orient character Caliban she tried to escape " 'Tis a villain, sir, I do not love to look on"(Act 1. Scene. 2, 370, 371). While in Davenant 's and Dryden 's adaptation of the play, Miranda 's reply is different " 'Tis a creature, sir, I do not love to look on" (19). So, it is noticed that the discourse has been changed in the description of Caliban in the two versions of the play; first he was a villain and that villain becomes a creature, he was not a human but then he becomes a human. Furthermore, the political situation which was at the time of writing …show more content…

The coming of Charles II to the throne has changed the foreign policy of England with its neighbors and with whom it considered them as enemies. The reader of the Restoration drama can notice the change of the discourse and ideology of England by the plays that were written during the reign of Charles II. This study sheds light on the Eastern woman character in Dryden 's Troilus and Cressida and All for Love and to compare them with the same characters in Shakespeare 's Troilus and Cressida and Antony and Cleopatra in order to figure out the unique identity of the Restoration drama, which is in the opposite way to the Renaissance drama; to deconstruct the imperial image of the previous age and to prove that Restoration drama is not a continuation of Renaissance drama.
This study attempts to raise and answer questions about the ideology of the Restoration dramatists, and their portrayal of the Eastern woman as virtuous and honorable, unlike Renaissance drama playwrights, also to connect their rewriting of well-known plays to the political situation at that time. The research will also be going to explore the expression of "cultural renegade" and its relationship with the change of the ideology between the two eras, and to figure out the implications of politics on drama in the Restoration

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