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Fatal Desire
Informed by film theory and a broad historical approach, Fatal Desire examines the theatrical representation of women in England, from the Restoration to the early eighteenth century—a period when for the first time female actors could perform in public. Jean I. Marsden maintains that the feminization of serious drama during this period is tied to the cultural function of theater. Women served as symbols of both domestic and imperial propriety, and so Marsden links the representation of women on the stage to the social context in which the plays appeared and to the moral and often political lessons they offered the audience. The witty heroines of comedies were usually absorbed into the soc...
The Re-Imagined Text
Shakespeare's plays were not always the inviolable texts they are almost universally considered to be today. The Restoration and eighteenth century committed what many critics view as one of the most subversive acts in literary history—the rewriting and restructuring of Shakespeare's plays. Many of us are familiar with Nahum Tate's "audacious" adaptation of King Lear with its resoundingly happy ending, but Tate was only one of a score of playwrights who adapted Shakespeare's plays. Between 1660 and 1777, more than fifty adaptations appeared in print and on the stage, works in which playwrights augmented, substantially cut, or completely rewrote the original plays. The plays were staged wit...
Theatres of Feeling
Theatre and theatregoing was central to the cultural life of later eighteenth-century Britain. In this engaging work, Jean I. Marsden explores the playhouse as a source of emotion during a period when the ability to feel demonstrated moral worth. Using first-hand accounts, reviews, and illustrations to complement the drama of the era, Marsden examines why both critics and audiences elevated the theatre above the pulpit and how they experienced the plays and performances that they witnessed. Tears and even fainting fits were a common reaction to powerful productions, and playwrights sought to harness this emotion. The book explores this intersection of text, performance, and affect in a series of case studies of plays exploring British liberty, empire and the evils of antisemitism. With a focus on emotional response, Theatres of Feeling delivers a new approach to dramatic literature and performance, one that moves beyond more limited studies of text or performance.
The Cambridge Companion to English Restoration Theatre
Fourteen specially commissioned essays provide essential information about staging, playwrights, themes and genres in the drama of the Restoration.
Theatres of Feeling
Engaging account of theatregoing in the later eighteenth century that explores how audiences responded emotionally to the performances.
Shakespeare and the Eighteenth Century
In 1700, Shakespeare was viewed as one of the leading Renaissance playwrights, but not as supreme. By 1800, he was not only widely performed and read but celebrated as a universal genius and a national literary hero. What happened during the intervening years is the subject of this fascinating volume, which brings together Renaissance and eighteenth-century scholars who examine how Shakespeare gradually penetrated, and came to dominate, the culture and intellectual life of people in the English-speaking world. The contributors approach Shakespeare from a wide range of perspectives, to illuminate the way contemporary philosophy, science and medicine, textual practice, theatre studies, and lit...
Prologues and Epilogues of Restoration Theater
Often perceived as merely formulaic or historical documents, dramatic prologues and epilogues – players’ comic, poetic bids for the audience’s good opinion – became essential parts of Restoration theater, appearing in over 90 percent of performed and printed plays between 1660 and 1714. Their popularity coincided with the rise of the English actress, and Prologues and Epilogues of Restoration Theater unites these elements in the first book-length study on the subject. It finds that these paratexts provided the first sanctioned space for actresses in Britain to voice ideas in public, communicate directly with other women, and perform comedy – arguably the most powerful type of speech, and one that enabled interrogation of misogynist social practices. This book provides a taxonomy of prologues and epilogues with a corresponding appendix, and demonstrates through case studies of Anne Bracegirdle and Anne Oldfield how the study of prologues and epilogues enriches Restoration theater scholarship. Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
A Companion to Restoration Drama
This Companion illustrates the vitality and diversity of dramatic work 1660 to 1710. Twenty-five essays by leading scholars in the field bring together the best recent insights into the full range of dramatic practice and innovation at the time. Introduces readers to the recent boom in scholarship that has revitalised Restoration drama Explores historical and cultural contexts, genres of Restoration drama, and key dramatists, among them Dryden and Behn
Music and Musicians on the London Stage, 1695-1705
From 1695 to 1705, rival London theater companies based at Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn Fields each mounted more than a hundred new productions while reviving stock plays by authors such as Shakespeare and Dryden. All included music. Kathryn Lowerre charts the interactions of the two companies from a musical perspective, emphasizing each company's new productions and their respective musical assets, including performers, composers, and musical materials. Lowerre also provides rich analysis of the relationship of music to genres including comedy, dramatick opera, and musical tragedy, and explores the migration of music from theater to theater, performer to performer, and from stage to street and back again. As Lowerre persuasively demonstrates, during this period, all theater was musical theater.
