Why do almost all the books on ‘Renaissance drama’ stop in 1642 with the comment that at this point ‘the Puritans closed the theatres’, and why do nearly all books on ‘Restoration drama’ open in 1660, when ‘Charles II set up two new theatre companies’? That is the question I began with.

What follows is a response, rather than an answer, to that question. It takes the form of three interdependent arguments. One argument is that the critical construction of the Civil War as a dramatic lacuna is both inaccurate and serves specific accounts of cultural value. The second argument is that when read in relationship to the particular circumstances of its production the drama of 1642–60 – still, despite some recent scholarly attention, off all cultural maps – is generically diverse and enunciates equally diverse political positions. In analysing this drama it is necessary to enlarge rather than restrict our understanding of what constitutes a dramatic text. Thirdly, therefore, this study challenges some understandings of the relationship between dramatic culture and politics in the period. Assumptions that drama in the period was solely royalist, coterie or ‘closet’ remain influential despite extensive critical re-readings of the 1640s (by Butler, Norbrook, Smith, Zwicker and others) and the introduction examines traditions which generated and maintain these ideas.