Players, Playwrights, Playhouses

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This book brings together theatre historians to identify and exemplify a variety of productive new approaches to the investigation of plays, players, playwrights, playhouses and other aspects of theatre in the long eighteenth century. Their inquiries range from stage censorship and anti-theatricalism to the political resonances of adultery comedy.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• List of Illustrations and Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Series Introduction: Redefining British Theatre History
• Introduction: Expanding Horizons
• Part I Drama, Theatre and History
• Theatre History, 1660-1800: Aims, Materials, Methodology
• Sleeping with the Enemy: Aphra Behn's The Roundheads and the Political Comedy of Adultery
• Shadowing Theatrical Change
• Reading Theatre History from Account Books
• Part II Controlling the Theatre
• Jeremy Collier and the Politics of Theatrical Representation
• Reconsidering Theatrical Regulation in the Long Eighteenth Century
• Part III Theatre Beyond London
• Theatre for Nothing
• Mixed Marriage: Irish Playwrights and the Hybrid Audience
• Country Matters: Irish Waggery and the British Theatrical Tradition
• Part IV Representations
• Universality, Early Modernity, and the Quagmire of Representing Race
• Hearing the Dead: The Sound of David Garrick
• The Visuality of the Theatre
• Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

History is not "what happened"; rather, it is opinions, more or less biased, about what happened. From time to time, new opinions arise and the accepted concept of history changes. Recording and even encouraging those changes is the clearly stated goal of the "Redefining British Theatre History" series, of which this is the latest volume. Holland's excellent introductory essay on the series explains its purpose and scope, offering as well a fine summary of British theatrical historiography from the work of E. K. Chambers (1866-1954) to the present. Of the book's dozen essays, Robert Hume's "Theatre History, 1600-1800: Aims, Materials, Methodology" is probably the most generally useful and informative. Other contributors stake out and question patches of historical ground extending from the minutely particular to the relatively general, with Matthew Kinservik's reappraisal of British theatrical regulation among the most interesting and Peter Holland's analysis of "records" of David Garrick's vocal patterns the quirkiest. Although few will find the entire volume of interest, it should be held by libraries that aspire to thorough coverage of theatrical history. Summing Up: Recommended. With reservations. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. T. A. Pallen emeritus, retired