The portrayal of male and female bodies in Gulliver’s Travels has long been the subject of critical debate, from early suggestions that Swift was motivated by personal animus against Maids of Honour to more recent studies characterising him as an inveterate misogynist or an effeminised admirer of women. This chapter suggests that the depictions of female bodies must be read alongside Gulliver’s preoccupation with his own body and its functions, and these representations should be understood in the context of a culture in which sexuality provided a recognised shorthand for political debate. The aristocratic rakish discourse of Restoration theatre, with its presentation of relations between men and women through metaphors of battle and struggle, was being challenged by the emergence of sentimental dramas celebrating marital harmony. Gulliver’s horror at female bodies and his idealisation of the social systems of Lilliput and Houyhnhnmland challenge the fetishisation of the family and reverence for domesticity that were increasingly characterising moral discourse and found their ideal form for expression in the development of the novel.

Rebuts the “fresh start” theory of Restoration drama, which regards the year 1660 as a turning point in English dramatic history. Stresses instead how and why 1660 should be seen as a moment of continuation as well as of change. Discusses the theatrical professionals (Henry Herbert, William Beeston, John Rhodes, Michael Mohun, George Jolly) who continued to suffer hardships and exclusion after the so-called restoration of the theatres, due to the exclusive theatre patents granted to Thomas Killigrew and William Davenant. Describes the legacy of the theatrical prohibition on the careers of dramatic stationers Francis Kirkman and Henry Herringman, as a respective loser and winner within the Restoration playbook trade. Argues that Restoration dramatic criticism ought to be read in the context of the 1640s and 1650s discourse analyzed in the first half of the monograph, which describes English drama’s identity centred around print publication. Notes that the modern conditions to study early modern drama, namely the existence of some kind of textual instantiation (a playtext, a fragment, allusion, or title in the historical record) were set in motion by the closure of the theatres in 1642.

Jonson was a key figure in rebuilding the repertoire of the revived playhouses of Restoration London, but as a model he was inhibiting as well as enabling. This essay first explores the circumstances in which his plays were revived and updated (exclusively by the King’s Company, who had their monopoly on Jonson’s plays confirmed in 1669). It goes on to look at the purposes to which the rival Duke’s Company put Jonson’s public image, as they sought to produce a Jonsonian comic output of their own. Both Thomas Shadwell and Edward Howard crafted works that drew on the plots and characters of Jonson’s comedies, particularly Epicene, concentrating the erotic themes suggested by the originals. The essay addresses Jonson’s predominance in the 1670–1 theatrical season, a crucial point at which aspects of his dramatic afterlife coalesced and the direction of comedy into the next decade was being formulated, and focuses on two Duke’s Company comedies: Shadwell’s The Humorists and Howard’s The Six Days Adventure; or, The New Utopia. It argues that these playwrights’ direct, practical efforts to enhance Jonson’s reputation (whilst strengthening their own) saw an awkward updating of humours comedy with moralistic depictions of erotic and homoerotic appetites.