Literature

This book argues that Romantic period drama for the stage is a neglected field of study. Looking beyond the Royal Theatres of Covent Garden and Drury Lane, it traces the link between networks of plebeian activism linked not only to theatricality, but also to specific ideologies around Freemasonry, radicalism, and attempts to avoid censorship. The role of the Lord Chamberlain and his Examiner of Plays is treated in detail. Drawing mainly on primary sources (including manuscripts) from the National Archives, Huntington Library, Folger and British Library, it documents the popular politicization of theatre, such as attempts to suppress the Royalty Theatre and the parallel growth in urban London private theatres working on the edge of legality. The connections to politics and working class subcultures are stressed throughout, not only by Queen Caroline’s consummate use of ‘illegitimate’ theatres such as the Royal Coburg (present day Old Vic) to forward her claims to the throne, but also contemporary drama’s reflection of issues such as provincial sex crime and the abolition of slavery. Moreover, this study of dramatic Romanticism emphasizes that Georgian theatricality permeated society through its private theatres (sometimes with paedophilic intent), ‘song-and-supper’ clubs, and constant confrontation with the oligarchic powers of the Royal Theatres and the Lord Chamberlain.

This book argues that the Elizabethan theatrical repertory was enthralled with the era's martial discourses and beset by its blinding visions. Offering a richly historicized account of the theater's engagement with “modern” warfare, the book juxtaposes the new military technologies and new modes of martial abstraction with the performance of war‐suffused dramas by Shakespeare, Marlowe, and their contemporaries. Equally important, it shows that even as early modern playwrights engaged cutting edge military practices, they routinely trafficked in phenomena resistant to the new rationalities, conjuring up a domain of eerie sounds, uncanny figures, and haunted temporalities. By going beyond the usual protocols of historicist criticism and emphasizing the complex dynamics of theatrical modes of address, this wide‐ranging study investigates the representation of early modern war trauma and recovers for us a compelling sense of the intimate relationship between affect and intellect on the Renaissance stage. Intervening in ongoing conversations about the drama's role in shaping the cultural imaginary, this study argues that, in an era of escalating militarization, England's first commercial theaters offered their audiences something of incalculable value—namely, a space for the performance and “working through” of what might otherwise remain psychically unbearable in war's violence.

This book utilizes new source material and documents that have not previously been analysed with regard to the Abbey Theatre's history in order to reconstruct the political, socio‐religious, and economic forces that exerted pressure on the theatre's programme. These pressures resulted in a complex dynamic: the theatre's directors (including W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory) publicly defied attempts to censor the Abbey's programme in order to create profitable controversies, while they privately self‐censored plays when they anticipated an opportunity for financial gain. It argues that plays that have not previously been regarded as censored should be recognized as such in light of the political and financial pressures that motivated their suppression. Furthermore, it argues that W. B. Yeats was not an uncompromising champion of artistic freedom, as he is remembered; rather, Yeats was willing to sacrifice the freedom of the artist when he foresaw a chance to ensure the longevity of his theatre.

Why does tragedy give pleasure? Why do people who are neither wicked nor depraved enjoy watching plays about suffering or death? Is it because we see horrific matter controlled by majestic art? Or because tragedy actually reaches out to the dark side of human nature? This wide-ranging, lively and engaging book offers a new answer to this perennial question. The ‘classical’ answer to the question is rooted in Aristotle and rests on the unreality of the tragic presentation: no one really dies; we are free to enjoy watching potentially horrible events controlled and disposed in majestic sequence by art. In the nineteenth century, Nietzsche dared to suggest that Greek tragedy is involved with darkness and unreason and Freud asserted that we are all, at the unconscious level, quite wicked enough to rejoice in death. But the problem persists: how can the conscious mind assent to such enjoyment? Strenuous bodily exercise is pleasurable. Could we, when we respond to a tragedy, be exercising our emotions, preparing for real grief and fear? King Lear actually destroys an expected majestic sequence. Might the pleasure of tragedy have more to do with possible truth than with ‘splendid evasion’?

This major new study of royal entertainments from the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I, including country house entertainments, tiltyard speeches, and court masques, is focused on the surviving material texts and so is a contribution to book history as well as the study of early modern court culture. Drafts, royal presentation manuscripts, widely‐circulating scribal copies, and printed pamphlets are all carefully placed in their cultural context, and the medium of manuscript is shown to have been at least as important as print for these texts' circulation. From the close collaboration between commissioning host and hired writer, to the varied interpretations imposed by copyists and publishers, entertainments were written and read within a complex social nexus: far from being royal propaganda, they reflected the distinct and sometimes competing agendas of monarchs, commissioning hosts, authors, publishers, scribal intermediaries, and readers. In six chapters Writing and Reading Royal Entertainments explores this interpretative community through a range of texts. The first part of the book looks at Elizabethan court entertainments: the Woodstock entertainment of 1575 (Chapter I); tiltyard speeches (Chapter II); and the distinctive features of printed pamphlets and scribal circulation, notably of the 1602 Harefield entertainment (Chapter III). The second part of the book is mostly concerned with Ben Jonson's work for the Jacobean court, with chapters on the Merchant Taylors' entertainment (Chapter IV) and the Theobalds entertainment (Chapter V). The final chapter looks at the texts of court masques, especially in the light of Jonson's understanding of the poet's elevated role. The chapter‐length conclusion takes the story of these material texts beyond the early modern period and looks at how they have been collected, bought, and sold over the centuries.