Riots, Religious Controversy and Quakers in Thomas Duffett’s <i>The Mock-Tempest</i> (1674)

Abstract Why Thomas Duffett’s burlesque The Mock-Tempest should have a Quaker as one of its main characters is a question which the scant criticism on the play has yet to answer. The Mock-Tempest is easily dismissed as a literary-historical curiosity, but that question points to a generative religious background which this essay attempts to reconstruct. Far from being simply another commodity in the mid-1670s market for dramatic sleaze, the play responds to two very precise historical events, the Bawdy House Riots of 1668 and the disputes between Quakers and Baptists of 1674. What is more, Duffett’s Ferdinand figure, Quakero, lampoons William Penn, ward of the Duke of York, future founder of Pennsylvania and, by 1674, leading theologian of the Friends, their intercessor at court and the facilitator of the Quaker purchase and colonization of West Jersey. Thus, Duffett’s burlesque not only exploits the comic potential of the stage Quaker but is also deeply implicated in Restoration religious controversy.