Thomas Higgons’s “The Dismal Tempest”: an unpublished seventeenth-century play fragment

Abstract

This article introduces a new seventeenth-century play fragment, “The Dismal Tempest,” by Sir Thomas Higgons (1623/4-1691), a Member of Parliament. It presents “The Dismal Tempest” as an act of political playwriting and contextualizes it in relation to Higgons’s other literary output, including his now-lost collection of poetry. “The Dismal Tempest,” I suggest, draws on tropes from pastoral and romance genres in order to promote a pro-Stuart agenda. This article provides the first bibliography of Higgons’s works as well as the first edition of his play fragment, which offers important evidence about amateur playwriting and political theatre in seventeenth-century England. With its emphasis on succession and inherent nobility, “The Dismal Tempest” reflects both the theatrical conventions and political climate in which it was written.