The concealed fancies and Cavendish identity

The Concealed Fancies, a play co-written by the earl of Newcastle’s two eldest daughters Lady Jane Cavendish and Lady Elizabeth Brackley and originally intended for household performance at either Bolsover or Welbeck, is strongly focused on family. The main plot, which centres on the two fictional sisters called Luceny and Tattiney, clearly affords, amongst other things, a means for the two actual sisters Jane and Elizabeth to express the intellectual sympathy and mutual devotion which is evident throughout their lives and writings; the subplot introduces three female cousins, who to some extent seem to offer additional portrayals of the two Cavendish daughters and of their younger sister Frances, and two brothers, who are clearly based on their own two brothers Charles and Henry, while the happy ending is brought about only with the appearance of the sisters’ father, who is clearly modelled on Newcastle himself. In this essay, I trace the ways in which this clever and sophisticated play represents identity as constructed through language, particularly literary and theatrical language, not least because it draws on a number of earlier literary texts associated with the Cavendish family. I pay particular attention to its debts to Shakespeare and to the Nottinghamshire dramatist William Sampson.