Drama
- Thomas Shadwell's play The Virtuoso (1676) includes an old libertine named Snarl who entreats a prostitute, Mrs Figgup, to bring out the birch rods. It is unclear if he is to flog her or be flogged.
- Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery (1684), an obscene Restoration closet drama thought to be by John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester.
- In Thomas Otway's play Venice Preserv'd (1682), Act III, Scene i, an old senator, Antonio, visits the house of Aquilina, a Greek courtesan. Antonio pretends to be a bull, then a frog, begging her to spit on him, and then a dog, biting her legs. She whips him, then throws him out and tells her footmen to keep him out.
- Jean Genet's play The Maids (1947) concerns two maids who play out dominant and submissive roles.
- Genet's play The Balcony (1957) is set in a brothel where clients and staff perform various fetishized roles while a revolution brews outside.
Read more about this topic: Sadism And Masochism In Fiction
Famous quotes containing the word drama:
“In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self- respect.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“It’s hard enough to write a good drama, it’s much harder to write a good comedy, and it’s hardest of all to write a drama with comedy. Which is what life is.”
—Jack Lemmon (b. 1925)
“By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more, and not merely to spend our feelings.”
—Arthur Miller (b. 1915)