Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

3-1982

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

English

Major Professor

J. M. Armistead

Committee Members

Percy G. Adams, John Hurt Fisher, Thomas Cooke

Abstract

John Banks's seven serious dramas written during the years of the Popish Plot and Succession Crisis (1677-1684) have been insufficiently studied from the standpoint of their intrinsic merit. Critics have been, instead, content to analyse subsidiary matters with the result that many now perceive his plays to be merely strings of "affecting incidents staged to provide continuous emotional agitation for his audience." An analysis of the dominant motifs of each of the plays leads, however, to the conclusion that the plays are, in fact, modestly unified dramas which treat directly or indirectly the central concerns of the Restoration audience.

The Rival Kings (1677), an opening effort at heroic drama, employs opposing images to illuminate the enigmatic character of Alexander the Great, who tangentially resembles Charles II. Another effort at heroic. The Destruction of Troy (1678), analyses the dissolution of the heroic code and a heroic civilization, at the same time drawing parallels with Restoration England. Cyrus the Great (c. 1680?) uses motifs which illustrate the virtuous qualities of a heroic civilization, thus offering a response to the two preceding dramas about destructive cultures. In The Unhappy Favourite (1681) Banks develops motifs which illuminate a pair of contrasting worlds, one of a rapidly fading holistic past, the other of a Machiavellian, fragmented present; Restoration England as much as Tudor England is the subject of the play. In Vertue Betray'd (1682) he provides a satire on his own monarch and reveals an evolving mastery of figurative language, especially that relating to Anne Boleyn's virtual apotheosis. The Innocent Usurper (c. 1683?), perhaps Banks's finest play, comments on the Succession Crisis, offering a virtual doomsday scenario for a Catholic succession, and is pervaded by motifs developing the theme of usurpation. In his last play of this period, The Island Queens (1684), Banks reexamines the problem of succession, using motifs associated with distinguishing appearance from reality.

Given Banks’s modestly skillful handling of imagery and motifs, he warrants further consideration as a member of that group of Restoration serious dramatists who reached just short of Dryden in excellence--Lee, Southerne, and Otway.

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