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Article: The succession crisis and Elkanah Settle's "The Conquest of China by the Tartars".(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation
- Article date:
- June 22, 2004
- Author:
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Elkanah Settle is perhaps best known as a blatant political opportunist who shifted his allegiance from Whig to Tory during the Exclusion Crisis. After the 1682 fall of Shaftesbury, Settle's sudden disavowal of his Whig propaganda, which included pamphlets denouncing James II's succession and a virulent anti-Catholic tragedy, The Female Prelate (1680), was viewed with suspicion even by the Tories. Settle's notoriety subsequently has led critics--until very recently--to focus on his polemical works during the Exclusion crisis and to overlook the political implications of his heroic tragedies of the early- to mid-1670s, including Cambyses, King of Persia (1671), The Empress ...