Unmarried Mothers on the English Stage after the Godly Revolution

Abstract

Unmarried mothers and children born out of wedlock are notoriously absent from the Carolean stage, which, on the other hand, saw an abundance of rakish gallants and prostitutes populating sexually charged plots. It is not a coincidence that the only two plays premiered between the 1660s and 1700 featuring an unmarried woman with a live child come up precisely with the arrival of William and Mary. This paper analyses the ways in which these plays—The Squire of Alsatia (1688) by Thomas Shadwell, and The Marriage-Hater Matched (1692) by Thomas Durfey—use the unmarried mother to convey a moral message that echoed William and Mary’s project of moral reform. However, these women are portrayed in radically different ways in both comedies. Although she takes a customary position of scorn in The Squire, the unmarried mother gets to be a good-hearted heroine that is eventually redeemed in The Marriage-Hater, a very challenging position for Durfey to portray which required of intra and extra textual devices to support her redemption without appearing to condone vice.