SOURCE: "A Feminist Link in the Old Boys' Network: The Cosseting of Katherine Philips," in Curtain Calls: British and American Women and the Theater, 1660–1820, edited by Mary Anne Schofield and Cecelia Macheski, Ohio University Press, 1991, pp. 71–104.

In the following excerpt, Mulvihill traces the development of Philips's career in the context of the "Orinda" myth and the "old boys' network" that contributed to her popular success.

The Restoration is significant in the history of English feminism because it witnessed the advance of women playwrights in the professional theater. The first decade of the Restoration was graced by four newcomers: Katherine Philips (Pompey, 1663; Horace, 1668), Frances Boothby (Marcelia, 1670), Aphra Behn (The Forc'd Marriage, 1670), and Elizabeth Polwhele (The Faithful Virgins, [1670/71]). Behn was the most prolific and commercially successful in this first wave of dramatic ingénues. Boothby and Polwhele the most obscure. Katherine Philip's place in this cluster of female dramatists is...