Coyness and crime in restoration comedy [electronic resource] : women's desire, deception, and agency / Peggy Thompson.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Coyness and Crime examines the extraordinary focus on feminine coyness in forty English comedies by ten diverse playwrights of the late seventeenth-century. In contexts ranging from reaffirmations of church and king to emerging interests in liberty and novelty, these plays consistently reveal women caught in an ironic and nearly intractable convergence of objectification and culpability that allows them little innocent sexual agency; this is both the source and the legacy of coyness in Restoration comedy"-- Provided by publisher.

Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest, 2015. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest affiliated libraries.