As Chapter 5 details, the theatrical promise of courtliness, prestige, and technological innovation attracted talented men and women who sought careers as dramatists. The duopoly, however, severely limited their opportunities, as did the ever growing backlog of old plays. After 1682, only one company remained to which they could sell their product, and overburdened payrolls consumed budgets that could otherwise be spent on new play development. Dramatists thus found themselves in the contradictory position of, on the one hand, affecting the gentility necessary for belonging to this exclusive cultural enterprise, and, on the other, chasing after diminishing opportunities like any common hack. And, finally, the theatre’s embrace of luxury and innovation made scarce another limited resource over which dramatists now competed: sumptuous scenic effects to adorn their scripts. By the end of the century, so deeply felt was disaffection with working conditions that few literary-minded writers took up drama as a profession, thereby establishing a pattern that would continue well into the eighteenth century.

Chapter 2 analyzes how both patent companies used the duopoly to intensify consumer demand through the complementary strategies of engineered scarcity and manufactured prestige. In addition to limiting the number of theatres operating in London, the patentees designated two-thirds of the auditorium for those wealthy enough to spend discretionary income on vastly increased ticket prices. In their pursuit of prestige, the companies also imported various French repertory practices, such as later curtain times and long runs, that did not map well onto the traditional six-day-a-week English performance calendar. Additionally, the early Restoration practice of mounting a pre-1660 repertory, owing to the lack of new playwrights, became an ingrained habit. The resulting repetition within the dramatic repertory failed to realize the box office magic sought by management: premieres of new plays were few and revivals of old plays many, to the consternation of spectators and playwrights alike. To flourish, the Restoration companies needed to offer a varied dramatic repertory that was both affordable and accessible to a large swath of Londoners.

Molière’s career was punctuated by episodes of polemic. In the twin contexts of an ideological quarrel concerning theatre’s morality and a commercial war between rival theatres, he confronted primarily two types of enemy: the dévots who condemned theatre in general and his rivals who took against his theatre in particular. His private life was attacked as well as his public one (as author, actor and company leader). He was sometimes condemned with disdain as the ‘best farce actor in France’, sometimes with dread as a ‘demon clothed in flesh’. Faced with plots and threats of censorship, Molière shone by his exploitation of these polemical episodes to invent new theatrical forms and confirm his supremacy. From Les Précieuses ridicules to Dom Juan, via L’École des femmes and Tartufe, his entire output can be seen to derive from a conflictual logic, whereby each new play is generated by the debates surrounding the preceding one, in a process of constant negotiation with the legitimising powers whose support he sought: the Parisian public and those with political power. Polemic was thus a driving creative force and laughter became Molière’s most fearful weapon in bringing down his rivals.

This chapter considers the contribution Ibsen made to theatre practice in the late nineteenth century by concentrating on audiences, auditoria and acting. It begins with glimpses of two nights in the theatre separated by fifty years. The first glimpse comes from the opening of one of Ibsen’s least known plays, Olaf Liljekrans, in January 1857, at Komediehuset (the playhouse) in Bergen, where Ibsen did his theatrical apprenticeship. The second glimpse comes from a performance of one of his most famous plays, Hedda Gabler, in February 1909, at Den Nationale Scene (the National Stage) in Bergen. The changes in the practice of acting, as illustrated by these two performances, are analysed with regard to changes in the design of auditoria and cultures of spectatorship. The chapter argues that three modes – the spatial, the psychological and the spectatorial – are all intertwined in Ibsen’s major innovations in the practice of theatre.

Of all types of Greek benefaction, agonistic festivals – that is, festivals that revolved around athletic, dramatic or cultural contests – may have been the most central to the phenomenon of civic euergetism in the Greek cities of the Hellenistic and Roman period. Core questions of the chapter are: What was the significance of the fact that public festivals were paid and organised by private benefactors? Why did benefactors do this? And what was it that cities stood to gain? The main argument is that agonistic festivals were not simply an object of euergetism but also a medium through which euergetism evolved. They not only were an opportunity for elite benefactors (and athletes) to increase their prestige but were primarily mass events where benefactors and their communities were jointly involved in representing the central social, cultural and political values of the time.