From stage to page: Restoration theatre and the prose of Andrew Marvell

Abstract

Andrew Marvell (1621-78), though best known today as a lyric poet, was also the author of a handful of aggressive pamphlets on religious toleration and proto-Whig political values. In comparison to earlier polemic produced by divines such as John Owen, Richard Baxter, or Samuel Parker, Marvell's books appear as a radical aesthetic departure into a witty style of dramatic pamphlet. This thesis argues that Marvell's aesthetic innovation owes to his infusion of theatre and theatricality into ecclesiastical controversy. The hybrid polemic caused a point of contact between smaller separate publics foreshadows the opening of the wider Public Sphere that Jurgen Habermas situates in the wake of the 16889 Glorious Revolution. As a new style of public writing, Marvell's hybrid polemic initiated a crossover between the ecclesiastical and theatrical publics that expanded debate to a new idiom and a wider audience.