Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T17:06:41.774Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Restoration and early eighteenth-century drama

from PART II - LITERARY GENRES: ADAPTATION AND REFORMATION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Harold Love
Edited by
John Richetti
John Richetti
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Get access

Summary

The Restoration theatre, while in many ways a new creation, maintained important continuities with pre-1642 practice. The indoor playhouse lit by candlelight and charging high prices had existed since Shakespeare's time. Perspective scenery had been used in Caroline court masques and in D'Avenant's interregnum entertainments. Although the Elizabethan thrust stage (out into the audience space) was abandoned, acting took place in front of the proscenium arch, not behind it as in present-day scenic theatres. Actors still had to be the ‘servants’ of some powerful person: the King's Company, who were regarded as legal successors to the earlier King's Men, belonged to the royal household and the Duke's Company to that of the king's brother, James, Duke of York. Caroline models of censorship were restored, with the Master of the Revels required to approve scripts for performance and the Surveyor of the Press those for printing. Elements of the old actor–sharer system were in evidence as late as 1695 with the brilliant Lincoln's Inn Fields troupe. What then had changed? The most momentous innovation was the restriction of trade to no more than two companies at any one time, which was undertaken to protect the large investments in buildings and scenery and the steep rise in manpower necessary to meet raised audience expectations. The King's Company patentee, Thomas Killigrew, boasted to Pepys that the stage was ‘now by his pains a thousand times better and more glorious then ever heretofore’. The new roofed theatres were handsome, brick constructions, employing the continental technology of illusionism based on wing-and-shutter scenery (that is, painted canvas backgrounds and borders run on from the sides) and the use of machines.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660–1780 , pp. 107 - 131
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Behn, Aphra, The Works of Aphra Behn, ed. Todd, Janet, 7 vols., London: Pickering and Chatto, 1992–6.Google Scholar
Boyle, Roger, The Dramatic Works, of Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery, ed. Clark, W. S., 2 vols., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1937.Google Scholar
Burnaby, William, The Dramatic Works of William Burnaby, ed. Budd, F. E., London: Eric Partridge, 1931.Google Scholar
Canfield, J. Douglas, Nicholas Rowe and Christian Tragedy, Gainsville: University of Florida Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Canfield, J. Douglas, Tricksters and Estates: On the Ideology of Restoration Comedy, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997.Google Scholar
Cavendish, Margaret, ,Duchess of Newcastle, Plays Never before Printed, London, 1668.Google Scholar
Centlivre, Susannah, The Dramatic Works, 3 vols., London: Pearson, 1872.Google Scholar
Cibber, ColleyThe Dramatic Works of Colley Cibber, 4 vols., London, 1760.Google Scholar
Congreve, William, The Complete Plays of William Congreve, ed. Davis, Herbert, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967.Google Scholar
Crowne, John, The Comedies of John Crowne: a Critical Edition, ed. McMullin, B. J., New York: Garland, 1984.Google Scholar
Crowne, John, The Dramatic Works of John Crowne, ed. Maidment, James and Logan, W. H., 4 vols., Edinburgh: Patterson, 1872–4.Google Scholar
Danchin, Pierre, The Prologues and Epilogues of the Restoration 1660–1700, 7 vols., Nancy: Publications de l'université de Nancy 11, 1981–8.Google Scholar
Dobrée, Bonamy, Restoration Comedy 1660–1720, London: Oxford University Press, 1921.Google Scholar
Dryden, John, The Works of John Dryden, gen. eds. Hooker, Edward Niles, Swedenberg, H. T. Jr and Roper, Alan, 20 vols., Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1956–2002.Google Scholar
Etherege, George Sir, The Dramatic Works of Sir George Etherege, ed. Brett-Smith, H. F. B., 2 vols., Oxford: Blackwell, 1927.Google Scholar
Farquhar, George, The Works of George Farquhar, ed. Kenny, Shirley Strum, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Fisk, Deborah Payne, The Cambridge Companion to Restoration Drama, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fujimura, Thomas H., The Restoration Comedy of Wit, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1952.Google Scholar
Fullard, Joyce (ed.), British Women Poets 1660–1800: An Anthology, Troy, NY: Whiston Publishing Company, 1990.Google Scholar
Gay, John, Dramatic Works, ed. Fuller, John, 2 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Gladish, David F. ed. Sir William Davenant&s Gondibert, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971).Google Scholar
Holland, Norman N., The First Modern Comedies: the Significance of Etherege, Wycherley and Congreve, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holland, Peter, The Ornament of Action: Text and Performance in Restoration Comedy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Hughes, Derek, English Drama 1660–1700, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hughes, Leo, A Century of English Farce, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1956.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hume, Robert D., English Drama in the Later Seventeenth Century, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1976.Google Scholar
Hume, Robert D., Henry Fielding and the London Theatre, 1728–1737, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Jordan, Robert J., The Convict Theatres of Early Australia: 1788–1840, Sydney: Currency Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Kewes, Paulina, Authorship and Appropriation: Writing for the Stage in England, 1660–1710, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knights, L. C., ‘Restoration Comedy: the Reality and the Myth’, in Explorations: Essays in Criticism, Mainly on the Literature of the Seventeenth Century, London: Chatto and Windus, 1946.Google Scholar
Lee, Nathaniel, The Works of Nathaniel Lee, ed. Stroup, Thomas B. and Cooke, Arthur L., 2 vols., New Brunswick, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1954–5.Google Scholar
Loftis, John, The Politics of Drama in Augustan England, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963.Google Scholar
Love, Harold, ‘Constructing Classicism: Dryden and Purcell’, in Hammond, Paul and Hopkins, David (eds.), John Dryden: Tercentenary Essays, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Love, Harold, ‘Dryden, Rochester and the invention of the “Town”’, in John Dryden (1631–1700): His Politics, his Plays, and his Poets, Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Love, Harold, Congreve, Oxford: Blackwell, 1974.Google Scholar
Luckett, Richard, ‘Exotick but rational entertainments’, in Axton, Marie and Williams, Raymond (eds.), English Drama: Forms and Development. Essays in Honour of Muriel Clara Bradbrook, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Lynch, Kathleen M., The Social Mode of Restoration Comedy, New York: Macmillan, 1926.Google Scholar
Maguire, Nancy Klein, Regicide and Restoration: English Tragicomedy 1660–1671, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Manley, Lawrence, Literature and Culture in Early Modern London, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Markley, Robert, Two-edg'd Weapons: Style and Ideology in the Comedies of Etherege, Wycherley, and Congreve, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Marshall, Geoffrey, Restoration Serious Drama, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975.Google Scholar
McCarthy, B. Eugene, William Wycherley: a Biography, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Milhous, Judith and Hume, Robert D., ‘The Multimedia Spectacular on the Restoration Stage’, in Kenny, Shirley Strum (ed.), British Theatre and the Other Arts, 1660–1800, Washington: Folger Books, 1984.Google Scholar
Milhous, Judith and Hume, Robert D., A Register of English Theatrical Documents 1660–1737, 2 vols., Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Milhous, Judith and Hume, Robert D., Producible Interpretations: Eight English Plays, 1675–1707, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Milhous, Judith and Hume, Robert D., Thomas Betterton and the Management of Lincoln's Inn Fields, 1695–1708, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Nicoll, Allardyce, A History of English Drama 1660–1900, 6 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Otway, Thomas, The Works of Thomas Otway, ed. Ghosh, J. C., 2 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932.Google Scholar
Owen, Susan J., Restoration Theatre in Crisis, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Owen, Susan J. (ed.), A Companion to Restoration Drama, Oxford: Blackwell, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palmer, John, Comedy of Manners, London: Bell, 1913.Google Scholar
Pearson, Jacqueline, The Prostituted Muse, Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1988.Google Scholar
Pepys, Samuel, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. Latham, Robert and Matthews, William, 11 vols., London: G. Bell & Sons, 1970–83.Google Scholar
Powell, Jocelyn, Restoration Theatre Production, London: Routledge, 1984.Google Scholar
Price, Curtis, Henry Purcell and the London Stage, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Price, Curtis, Music in the Restoration Theatre, Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Rivero, Albert J., The Plays of Henry Fielding: A Critical Study of His Dramatic Career, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989.Google Scholar
Roberts, David, The Ladies: Female Patronage of Restoration Drama 1660–1700, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Rothstein, Eric, Restoration Tragedy: Form and the Process of Change, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967.Google Scholar
Sedley, Charles Sir, The Poetical and Dramatic Works of Sir Charles Sedley, ed. Pinto, V. Sola, 2 vols., London: Constable, 1928.Google Scholar
Shadwell, Thomas, The Complete Works of Thomas Shadwell, ed. Summers, Montague, 5 vols., London: The Fortune Press, 1927.Google Scholar
Slagle, Judith (ed.), Thomas Shadwell Reconsider'd, published as Restoration 20 (1996).Google Scholar
Smith, Dane, Plays about the Theatre in England, London: Oxford University Press, 1936.Google Scholar
Smith, John Harrington, The Gay Couple in Restoration Comedy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1948.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Southerne, Thomas, The Works of Thomas Southerne, ed. Jordan, Robert and Love, Harold, 2 vols., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Steele, Richard Sir, The Plays of Sir Richard Steele, ed. Kenny, Shirley Strum, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Styan, J. L., Restoration Comedy in Performance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
The London Stage, 1660–1800, Part 1: 1660–1700, ed. Van Lennep, William; Part 2: 1700–1729, ed. Avery, Emmett L., 2 vols., and Part 3: 1729–1747, ed. Scouten, Arthur H., 2 vols., Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1960–5.Google Scholar
Turner, James G., ‘The Libertine Sublime: Love and Death in Restoration England’, Studies in Eighteenth-century Culture 19 (1989).Google Scholar
Underwood, Dale, Etherege and the Seventeenth-century Comedy of Manners, New Haven, CT Yale University Press, 1957.Google Scholar
Vanbrugh, John Sir, The Complete Works of Sir John Vanbrugh, ed. Dobrée, Bonamy and Webb, Geoffrey, 4 vols., London: Nonesuch Press, 1927.Google Scholar
Whyman, Susan E., Sociability and Power in Late-Stuart England: the Cultural Worlds of the Verneys 1660–1700, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Wilmot, John, second Rochester, Earl of, The Works of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, ed. Love, Harold, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Winn, James A., ‘Theatrical Culture 2: Theatre and Music’, in Zwicker, Stephen N. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to English Literature 1650–1740, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Wycherley, William, The Plays of William Wycherley, ed. Friedman, Arthur, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×