The Cambridge History of British Theatre, Volume 2

Front Cover
Jane Milling, Peter Thomson, Joseph Walter Donohue (Jr.)
Cambridge University Press, 2004 - English drama - 540 pages
Volume One of The Cambridge History of British Theatre begins in Roman Britain and ends with Charles II's restoration to the throne imminent. The four essays in Part One treat pre-Elizabethan theatre, the eight in Part Two focus on the riches of the Elizabethan era, and the seven in Part Three on theatrical developments during and after the reigns of James I and Charles I. The essays are written for the general reader by leading British and American scholars, who combine an interest in the written drama with an understanding of the material conditions of the evolving professional theatre which the drama helped to sustain, often enough against formidable odds. The volume unfolds a story of enterprise, innovation and, sometimes, of desperate survival over years in which theatre and drama were necessarily embroiled in the politics of everyday life: a vivid subject vividly presented.

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Contents

List of illustrations
x
General preface
xvi
part i
lii
the theatre from 1660 to 1800
3
Theatres and repertory
53
Theatre and the female presence
71
Theatre politics and morality
103
a case study
126
actors and their repertoires
272
Theatres their architecture and their audiences
292
Stage design from Loutherbourg to Poel
309
Theatre and midVictorian society 18511870
331
Gendering Victorian theatre
352
Popular entertainment 17761895
369
The new drama and the old theatre
405
Bibliography
440

Theatre outside London 16601775
165
Io The theatrical revolution 17761843
199
I800 TO 1895
219

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