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Chapter 8 - Compassion, Contingency and Conversion in James Shirley’s The Sisters

from Part IV - Performing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2021

Katherine Ibbett
By
Alison Searle
Edited by
Kristine Steenbergh
Katherine Ibbett
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Kristine Steenbergh
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
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Summary

Alison Searle examines the formal procedures connected to compassion in James Shirley’s The Sisters (licensed 26 April 1642). She focuses on the problems posed by outsiders: the compassion of bandits dwelling as an anti-society in the woodlands, the recurring trope of the vagrant/beggar/gypsy/actor used to interrogate histrionic techniques deployed to evoke compassion and the complexities of policing the performance of compassion within the early modern Protestant state. Shirley’s play elucidates the ways in which compassion could create new, dangerous communities, as well as exposing the limits of existing groups. By postulating the ruler as a potential object of compassion, the play proleptically examines one of the most pressing political questions of the English Civil War: can the monarch be an object of compassion? The play’s invitation to feel pity for the plight of the king creates a political space for subversive action. If one can empathise with the king, is he a potential peer?

Keywords

compassionconversiontheatreearly modern EnglandCaroline comedyEnglish Civil WarmonarchyJames ShirleyThe Sistersvagrants
Type
Chapter
Information
Compassion in Early Modern Literature and Culture
Feeling and Practice
 , pp. 159 - 176
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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