Fires and Feasting: Political Festivity in Behn’s Exclusion Crisis Plays

Adcock, Rachel

Abstract

This essay situates Aphra Behn’s plays, The Roundheads (1681/2) and The City-Heiress (1682), in the ongoing contest for physical and ideological control of the City of London during the Exclusion Crisis. In particular, it considers their dramatisation of civic festivals and demonstrations. In 1679–82 the Exclusionists had found success in exploiting the symbolic and memorialising function of traditional festivities, such as processions, bonfires, and banquets, to maintain geographical, ideological, and legal control of the City. Behn’s plays joined a variety of Tory counter spectacles and publications through which these Whig street politics were rivalled, exposed, and subverted. In the process, the plays negotiate debates surrounding the use but also the abuse of political festivity when it is used cynically or in the services of tyranny. In The Roundheads the differences between roundhead/Whig political manipulation and royalist/Tory festivity are relatively clear cut: royalist celebrations accompanying the Restoration are generated by the people and facilitated by the generosity of noble characters, a reciprocity that does not characterise the roundhead leaders’ cynical and arbitrary approach to festivity. The City-Heiress, however, adopts a more critical response to Tory celebrations, at a time when the court was threatening to remove the London Corporation’s charter.

Citation

Adcock, R. (2025). Fires and Feasting: Political Festivity in Behn’s Exclusion Crisis Plays. Women's Writing, 32(2), 149-164. https://doi.org/10.1080/09699082.2025.2483028

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 19, 2025
• Online Publication Date: Apr 24, 2025
• Publication Date: Apr 24, 2025
• Deposit Date: Mar 21, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 1, 2025
• Journal: Women's Writing
• Print ISSN: 0969-9082
• Electronic ISSN: 1747-5848
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 32
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 149-164
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09699082.2025.2483028
• Public URL: https://keele-repository.worktribe.com/output/1109914