Netherlands theater 1600-1730 - The last twenty years' research

This article discusses the studies published during the last twenty years o n the renaissance drama (1600-1670) and the French-classicist drama (1670-1 730) in the Netherlands. It is shown that most researchers are especially i nterested in, on the one hand, literary theory and poetical problems and on the other in moral and political contents of seventeenth and early eightee nth-century Dutch drama. Special attention is paid to the so-called histori cizing paradigm: the majority of the literary historians search for a histo rically legitimate context to analyse plays which were written about three or four hundred years ago.