The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre, 1730–1830

by Edited by Jane Moody , Daniel O'Quinn

• ISBN13: 9780521852371
• ISBN10: 0521852374
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-12-03
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This Companion offers a wide-ranging and innovative guide to one of the most exciting and important periods in British theatrical history. The scope of the volume extends from the age of Garrick to the Romantic transformation of acting inaugurated by Edmund Kean. It brings together cutting-edge scholarship from leading international scholars in the long eighteenth century, offering lively and original insights into the world of the stage, its most influential playwrights and the professional lives of celebrated performers such as James Quin, George Anne Bellamy, John Philip Kemble, Dora Jordan, Fanny Abington and Sarah Siddons. The volume includes essential chapters about eighteenth-century acting, production and audiences, important surveys of key theatrical forms such as tragedy, comedy, melodrama and pantomime as well as a range of exciting thematic essays on subjects such as private theatricals, 'black' theatre and the representation of empire.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	p. vii
Notes on contributors	p. ix
Preface	p. xiii
Abbreviations	p. xvii
Chronology	p. xviii
Performance	p. 1
Acting and actors from Garrick to Kean	p. 3
Dictating to the empire: performance and theatrical geography in eighteenth-century Britain	p. 21
Scenography and technology	p. 43
Spectatorship	p. 57
Genres	p. 71
The social life of eighteenth-century comedy	p. 73
Tragedy	p. 87
Pantomime	p. 103
Romantic melodrama	p. 115
Identities	p. 129
The making of an English audience: the case of the footmen's gallery	p. 131
Women playwrights	p. 145
Entertaining women: the actress in eighteenth-century theatre and culture	p. 159
Race and profit in English theatre	p. 175
Places of Performance	p. 189
Private theatricals	p. 191
Opera in the London theatres	p. 205
Acting in the periphery: the Irish theatre	p. 219
Theatre and empire	p. 233
Further Reading	p. 247
Reading theatre, 1730-1830	p. 249
Bibliography	p. 261
Index	p. 274
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