ext_6271 ([identity profile] wolfinthewood.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] wolfinthewood 2007-05-14 09:33 am (UTC)

Re: I have never read Cavendish's _Blazing World,_

Actually, I haven't read The Blazing World either. Maybe I should catch up with it sooner rather than later.

But Cavendish's play The Convent of Pleasure has a prince who disguises himself as a woman in order to get close to the lady he is after. She, being an independent heiress, has set herself up in a kind of secular nunnery. There is quite a bit of woman to woman courtship. Also a scene in which the lady gets all anguished about being in love with another woman and fears being punished by the Goddess Nature, only to be persuaded by the disguised prince that it is okay for them to kiss and embrace. Which they do on stage. (The play was not performed publicly; I don't know if there was ever a private performance. I believe the Cavendishes sometimes went in for amateur theatricals.) Of course, the prince's secret is eventually revealed and the two of them marry.

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