Old Playwrights, Old Soldiers, New Martial Subjects: The Cavendishes and the Drama of Soldiery

In letter CXXIII of CCXI Sociable Letters (1664), Margaret Cavendish’s female correspondent defends Shakespeare from a purported detractor—’’that person” who has denounced the dramatist for populating his plays with only “Clowns, Fools, Watchmen, and the like.” ¹ In response to the dull (male) reader who has censured Shakespeare’s plays, Cavendish’s more capable female reader praises the dramatist’s ability to show characters of diverse subject positions “Naturally” and “Probably” on the page and the stage. “So well he hath Express’d in his Plays all Sorts of Persons,” the bard’s fervent defender contends, that “one would think he had been Transformed into every one of those Persons he hath described.” ² Insisting that the variety of such “persons” attests to Shakespeare’s skill at impersonation, the letter writer extols the virtues of the general character types that appear with frequency in Shakespeare’s plays, from clowns to privy councilors, and then mentions fourteen specific characters by name. Notably, all six of the male characters whose proper names appear in Letter CXXIII are soldiers.