Swetnam, the Woman-hater, Arraigned by Women

AnonymousProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.3
Word count
123K words
Chapters
13

Tags

English Originals Dramatic Literature Power GameGender DebateDramatic DialogueSatirical StyleModern BritainFemale Perspective

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Swetnam, the Woman-hater, arraigned by women by AnonymousAuthor: Anonymous,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Nov 18, 2018

Editor's review

This is an anonymous early English play, its title literally meaning "Swetnam, the Woman-hater, Arraigned by Women." The play turns on the misogynist arguments circulating at the time, letting female characters accuse and judge the slanderer of women on stage, and has the character of a debate play and a satire. It is valuable for understanding seventeenth-century English ideas about gender, the stage image of women, and the tradition of argumentative drama. As a public-domain e-book from Project Gutenberg, the text is reproduced as it stands, with period spelling and diction and no modern notes, so the bar to reading is high. It suits researchers in theater history and gender history, or students of English literature, and works as classroom discussion material on how misogynist discourse is turned against itself on stage. General readers who want only the twists of a modern play may find the language obscure. Read a synopsis first, then go into the dialogue.

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Reading tips

  1. Look up the play's basic background and plot synopsis before entering the original dialogue.
  2. Mark the female characters' accusing speeches separately and trace their argumentative logic and rhetoric.
  3. Flag archaic spellings and rare words as you go, and look them up together after a first read-through.
  4. Read it alongside other plays of the period that touch on gender to develop a set of questions.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13

FAQ

Who wrote this play? Sources indicate the author is anonymous rather than a known playwright. Project Gutenberg releases it as a public-domain e-book without author attribution. Research on the specific authorship requires specialized bibliographies and scholarship on early English drama.
What does Swetnam in the title refer to? Swetnam is the "woman-hater" figure judged by female characters in the play, his name linked to the misogynist arguments circulating at the time. The play has female characters accuse and judge this figure, creating a structure of debate on stage. The specific plot and relationships should be checked against the text.
What are the difficulties of reading this old play? The main difficulties are old spelling, early modern English vocabulary, and the lack of modern notes. Public-domain e-books usually come without introduction, footnotes or glossary, so readers must prepare their own reference works and background material. Read a synopsis and the period background first, then proceed scene by scene.
Is it suitable as material for gender studies? It can serve as supplementary material. The play brings misogynist arguments onto the stage and has female characters rebut them, showing how gender ideas clashed at the time. But it is a literary work, not a social survey; use it alongside historical documents and avoid taking lines from the play as the consensus of the age.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Anonymous Author

Anonymous is a collective designation used in English-language publishing for works whose authorship is unknown or unsigned, rather than the real name of a single author. The 716 titles attributed to this name include the Gospel of John, Psalms, Romans, Luke, Philippians, and 1 Corinthians from the World English Bible, as well as the Gospel of John and Psalms from the King James Version. Such texts are mainly religious classics and ancient folk traditions that were copied, translated, and compiled over long periods, making their original authors difficult to trace; they therefore circulated anonymously. Public information is limited, and neither nationality nor dates of birth and death can be confirmed. The significance of anonymity lies in focusing attention on the works themselves rather than on authorial identity, and in reminding readers of the collective and variable nature of texts in transmission.