SOURCE: "Dramatic Dreamscape: Women's Dreams and Utopian Vision in the Works of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle," in Curtain Calls: British and American Women and the Theater, 1660-1820, edited by Mary Anne Schofield and Cecilia Macheski, Ohio University Press, 1991, pp. 18-33.

In this essay, Payne argues that Cavendish's flouting of the rules of dramatic composition in her plays is a deliberate rejection of masculine structures rather than a failure of her artistic talent. She also contends that Cavendish 's portrayal of modest and dutiful women illustrates the conflict she faced between social expectations and her own aspirations.

Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, was jeered by her Restoration contemporaries both high and low, male and female. Often known as "Mad Madge," she was described by Pepys [in Everybody's Pepys: The Diary of Samuel Pepys 1660-1669, 1926] as "a mad, conceited, ridiculous woman" whose husband was "an ass to suffer...