SOURCE: Flores, Stephan P. “Orrery's The Generall and Henry the Fifth: Sexual Politics and the Desire for Friendship.” The Eighteenth Century 37, no. 1 (spring 1996): 56-74.

In the essay below, Flores contends that Orrery's heroic plays define “the need for bonds of friendship and faith in political and sexual relations that would not simply restore a mythic heroic past, but would also establish a socio-political practice equal to the conflicted demands of the present.”

Scholars familiar with the popular heroic plays of Roger Boyle, First Earl of Orrery, have recently begun to explore in detail the ways in which his work articulates conflicts that proved peculiarly compelling to audiences who returned to playgoing at public theaters following the restoration of Charles II. Some critics have described his plays reductively as static disquisitions on rigid and précieux codes of love and honor.¹ Others, however, have noted or considered more closely...