Miroir du théâtre : mise en abyme et maniérisme dans The Convent of Pleasure de Margaret Cavendish (1668)

Abstract

This essay proposes to study the trope of the play-within-the-play, or more widely the metadramatic devices loosely covered by the term « mise en abyme », in one of Margaret Cavendish’s late plays, The Convent of Pleasure (1668). It will be shown that the play, although late in the century, can be considered as one of the last « Maniériste » plays, according to the very specific definition G. Mathieu-Castellani and G. Venet give to the concept in their seminal articles published in this volume. The term, borrowed from the French critical tradition, refers, among others, to peculiar modalities of imitation and variation and allows us to define precise modes of composition. The author of this essay is conscious of the problem Anglo-saxon critics have with this term, which applies perhaps more fitly to the history of art ; yet she has found it helpful to read Cavendish’s play in the light of this critical notion, as it is a work that is defined by its intertextuality, offering variations on the Shakespearean romantic comedy, the Stuart masque and the pastoral tragi-comedy (among other sources). In fact, The Convent of Pleasure can be read as a dramatic palimpsest, in which Cavendish plays with various generic models and authorities. This essay traces some of these and shows how the work plays with the notions of mimesis and illusion to offer an intertextual « patchwork » that points to the exhaustion of a particular mode. The failure of the utopian female community in the play can be read as emblematic of this impossibility to escape repetition. But the play ends on a glorification of the figure of the author which runs counter to this admission of aesthetic failure.