Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Part I The Ends of Enlightenment
- Part II Geographies: The Scenes of Literary Life
- Part III Histories: Writing in the New Movements
- 15 Rebellion, revolution, reform: the transit of the intellectuals
- 16 Changes in the world of publishing
- 17 The new poetries
- 18 Romanticism and poetic autonomy
- 19 Transformations of the novel – I
- 20 Transformations of the novel – II
- 21 Theatre, performance and urban spectacle
- 22 The epigenesis of genre: new forms from old
- 23 The literature of the new sciences
- 24 The making of child readers
- Part IV The Ends of Romanticism
- Chronology
- Bibliographies
- Index
- 1 A New Pocket Map of the Cities of London and Westminster; with the Borough of Southwark, Comprehending the new Buildings and other Alterations, 3rd edn (London: William Faden, 1790).">
- References
21 - Theatre, performance and urban spectacle
from Part III - Histories: Writing in the New Movements
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2009
Edited by
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Part I The Ends of Enlightenment
- Part II Geographies: The Scenes of Literary Life
- Part III Histories: Writing in the New Movements
- 15 Rebellion, revolution, reform: the transit of the intellectuals
- 16 Changes in the world of publishing
- 17 The new poetries
- 18 Romanticism and poetic autonomy
- 19 Transformations of the novel – I
- 20 Transformations of the novel – II
- 21 Theatre, performance and urban spectacle
- 22 The epigenesis of genre: new forms from old
- 23 The literature of the new sciences
- 24 The making of child readers
- Part IV The Ends of Romanticism
- Chronology
- Bibliographies
- Index
- 1 A New Pocket Map of the Cities of London and Westminster; with the Borough of Southwark, Comprehending the new Buildings and other Alterations, 3rd edn (London: William Faden, 1790).">
- References
Summary
The theatre world of the English Romantic period gives us phenomenal access to the fantasies and daily realities of a people living through one of the Western world’s most revolutionary periods. The content of what is presented on stage, the manner and places of its presentation, the types of person creating it, and commentary on its reception all provide extraordinary access to cultural ferment in the period and insight into how a people processes current events through theatrical means. Even the legal terminology that designates London theatrical scenes in this period – legitimate vs. illegitimate theatre – suggests an artistic forum in transition. It also accurately suggests how politics is addressed through aesthetic media. This is in large part because what animates theatrical discussion is debate over national representation, a concern deepened by reflections on the French Revolution and the abolition of slavery with their impassioned descriptions of what and who best represent ‘the English’ in an emerging democracy.
While concerns over representation emerge in discussions of all forms of art in this period (and in all periods of art), they are particularly salient in descriptions of Romantic theatre. At once aesthetic form and social forum, theatre requires an elaborate coordination of artistic, financial, technical and audience demands that, in this period, is distinguished by two pressures. First, each of these domains is not only in enormous flux but is also described as being so in ways that dramatize clashes between established and innovative or radical interests.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of English Romantic Literature , pp. 490 - 506Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
References
, The Shows of London, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978.
, Theatre and Disorder in Late Georgian London, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.
, The Dramatic and Poetical Works (1851), Hildesheim, NY: Georg Olms Verlag, 1976.
, The Spirit of Despotism: Invasions of Privacy in the 1790s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
, Shakespearean Constitutions: Politics, Theatre, Criticism, 1730–1830, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
, Memoirs of the Life of John Philip Kemble, Esq., Including a History of the Stage, from the Time of Garrick to the Present Period, 2 vols., London: Longman, Hurst, 1825.
, Memoirs of Mrs Siddons: Interspersed with Anecdotes of Authors and Actors, 2 vols., London: Henry Colburn, 1827.
, Women, Nationalism and the Romantic Stage: Theatre and Politics in Britain, 1780–1800, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
, New Readings in Theatre History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
(ed.), Acts of Supremacy: The British Empire on Stage, 1790–1930, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991.
, Impossible Purities: Blackness, Femininity, and Victorian Culture, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1998.
, Tragedy Walks the Streets: The French Revolution in the Making Of Modern Drama, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.
, Closet Stages: Joanna Baillie and the Theater Theory of British Romantic Women Writers, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.
(ed.), Women in British Romantic Theatre: Drama, Performance and Society, 1790–1840, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
, Illusion and the Drama: Critical Theory of the Enlightenment and Romantic Era, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991.
, ‘Forever Young: Master Betty and the Queer Stage of Youth in English Romanticism’, SAQ
95:3 (1996).Google Scholar
, In the Theatre of Romanticism: Coleridge, Nationalism, Women, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; pbk 2007.
, Lectures 1808–19: On Literature, 2 vols., ed. , vol. V, in The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Bollingen Series 75, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.
, The Censorship of the English Drama, 1737–1824 (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1976).
, ‘Spots of Time: The Structure of the Dramatic Evening in the Theater of Romanticism’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language
41:4 (1999).Google Scholar
, In the Shadows of Romance: Romantic Tragic Drama in Germany, England, and France, Athens: Ohio University Press, 1987.
(ed.), Slavery, Abolition, and Emancipation in the British Romantic Period, vol. V, The Drama, London: Pickering & Chatto, 1999.
, and (eds.), The Broadview Anthology of Romantic Drama, Toronto: Broadview Press, 2003.
(ed.), Joanna Baillie, Romantic Dramatist: Critical Essays, London and New York: Routledge, 2004.
, The Economics of the British Stage, 1800–1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
, and (eds.), Women and Playwriting in Nineteenth-century Britain, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
, Getting into the Act: Women Playwrights in London, 1776–1829, London: Routledge, 1995.
, Jr, Dramatic Character in the English Romantic Age, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970.
, Romanticism and the Gothic: Genre, Reception, and Canon Formation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
, Melodramatic Tactics: Theatricalised Dissent and the Marketplace, 1800–1885, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995.
, and , Melodrama: The Cultural Emergence of a Genre, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1996.
, The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, ed. , 2 vols., Toronto and London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1930–4.
, Hazlitt on Theatre, ed. and , New York: Hill and Wang, 1895.
(ed.), The London Stage, 1660–1800: A Calendar of Plays, Entertainments, and Afterpieces, 5 vols., Part 5: 1776–1800 (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1968)
, Leigh Hunt’s Dramatic Criticism, 1808–31, ed. and , New York: Columbia University Press, 1949.
, ‘On the Tragedies of Shakespeare, Considered with Reference to Their Fitness for Stage Representation’, in The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, ed. , London: Methuen, 1903–5.
, and , Ira Aldridge, the Negro Tragedian, Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1958.
, Harlequin in His Element: The English Pantomime, 1806–1836, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969.
, Illegitimate Theatre in London, 1770–1840, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
, and (eds.), Cambridge Companion to British Theatre, 1730–1830, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
, A History of English Drama, 1660–1900, 5 vols., vol. IV: Early Nineteenth Century Drama, 1800–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955).Google Scholar
, ed. Report from the Select Committee on Dramatic Literature: with the minutes of evidence, 1832; repr. in the Irish University Press Series of British Parliamentary Papers, (Shannon, Ireland, 1968).
, Harlequin Britain: Pantomime and Entertainment, 1690–1760, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.
, Staging Governance: Theatrical Imperialism in London, 1770–1800, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005.
, The Panorama: History of a Mass Medium, trans. , New York: Zone Books, 1997.
, Romantic Theatricality: Gender, Poetry, and Spectatorship, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997.
, A Mental Theatre: Poetic Drama and Consciousness in the Romantic Age, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988.
, Cities of the Dead: Circum-atlantic Performance, New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.
, Georgian Scene Painters and Scene Painting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
, Temple of Thespis: Some Private Theatres and Theatricals in England and Wales, 1700–1820, London: Society for Theatre Research, 1978.
, The Theatres of War: Performance, Politics and Society, 1793–1815, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.
, and , Curtain Calls: British and American Women and the Theater, 1660–1820, Athens and London: Ohio University Press, 1990.
, Closet Performances: Political Exhibition and Prohibition in the Dramas of Byron and Shelley, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.
(ed.), Romantic Drama in Place, Texas Studies in Literature and Language
41:4 (1999).
, Changeable Scenery: Its Origin and Development in the British Theatre, London: Faber, 1951.
, Glorious Causes: The Grand Theatre of Political Change, 1789–1833, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
, The French Revolution and the London Stage, 1789–1805, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
, The Image of the Actor: Verbal and Visual Representation in the Age of Garrick and Kemble, London: Pinter Publications, 1991.
, The Politics of Romantic Theatricality, 1787–1832: The Road to the Stage, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
, Theatric Revolution, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
- 1
- Cited by