Dryden's versions from Ovid span the full length of his translating career, and thus provide a unique opportunity to observe his principles and practice as a translator, the development of his translating art, and his constantly-evolving relationship with a single ancient author. Dryden had known Ovid from boyhood, and frequently echoed in his prose criticism the strictures on Ovid's verse which had been made from Roman times onwards: that Ovid was frequently 'witty out of season' and that his verse was often prolix, and 'against the order of Nature'. His earliest Ovidian translations, those included in the collaborative Ovid's Epistles (1680), do little to convince a sceptical reader of the high claims which he had made for Ovid as a skilful portrayer of female passion, since their wit often seems cold and callous (or merely tedious wordplay) and they manifest an awkward declamatory stiffness. But Dryden returned to Ovid in 1692 after a period of deep reflection both on the art of translation and on the course of his own life and literary career. The best of the late Ovidian translations, especially those in Fables (1700), reveal, more fully than any of his prose comments, that Dryden now saw Ovid as a poet who, by means of the very effects of witty distancing and strokes of 'fancy' which so many commentators have found uncongenial, was able to create a distinctive perspective on reality, in which reactions and emotions normally kept quite separate, and thought of as incompatible, could be delightfully fused. Ovid's witty mode, Dryden seems to have thought, was a means of creating a kind of philosophical detachment or serenity, whereby distressing, even brutal, events could be viewed with a unique combination of wit and pathos, tenderness and humour, distance and sympathy.

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This thesis is an in-depth analysis of the alliances, reputations, and meanings that were created within the Caroline dramatic community as a result of the playwrights' meticulous use of paratext. By scrutinizing the paratexts (including prologues and epilogues, commendatory verses, and dedications to patrons and readers) of three different Caroline authors (William Davenant, Richard Brome, and John Ford), I have provided a picture of the divided and conflicting political and social landscapes of the professional theatre during the reign of Charles I. Through the use of such framing material, playwrights situated themselves in coteries that promoted very distinct outlooks on the purpose and place of drama. Within the commercial theatre, the desire to please, as well as shape diverse and complicated audience tastes, was forwarded in both printed and performed ancillary material. Playwrights used paratext to attract a specific audience to their published plays and explain the motives and meanings embedded in these texts. This material, while promoting one set of values, also worked to condemn competing ideals, as authors criticized peers in order to advance their own reputations and their own plays. Paratext was included as a matter of course in the era, to explain the author's intentions in writing the play and to advertise the author in a specific and bespoke light. The paratexts that accompanied the plays of Davenant, Brome, and Ford helped shape and expand the reputation each man tried to form for himself. It also conditioned the reading of his plays, both in terms of meaning and message, as well as in how the play reflected the attitudes each held in relation to the theatre, his contemporaries, and his own public image. Davenant, Brome, and Ford had very different ideas on the role of the theatre and drama in society. These ideas were made known in the ancillary material and paratexts that accompanied their performed and printed plays. This thesis looks at how paratext and ancillary material were used in different ways by these men to shape their authorial reputations and temper audience reactions to their plays. It analyses how important and necessary paratext became to these playwrights writing from 1625 to the close of the theatres in 1642. Through these three playwrights, a wider investigation of how paratext was used to situate playwrights in the theatrical and literary communities of the Caroline era emerges.

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