“Dramatic Discourse and the Romantic Stance in Joanna Baillie’s Theatre"

The wide range of Joanna Baillie’s output within the mainstream of Romantic drama displays a consistent creative itinerary which, starting from the series experiments in her _Plays on the Passions_ (1798-1812), culminates in her conscious choice of a hybrid form in her last published – and never performed – play _Witchcraft_ (1836). The aim of this essay is to highlight how certain aspects of Baillie’s historical and cultural identity – while re-moulding eighteenth-century philosophical and moral traditions – take on a recognisably Romantic configuration, and at the same time are of primary importance in determining the changing forms of her dramatic discourse