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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2010
Although there was probably more drama written in English during the nineteenth century than in any previous century, the most popular dramatist of the period had been dead for two hundred years. The frequent presentations of Shakespeare's plays on the nineteenth-century stage caused certain problems—he had written for a different audience and a different theatre. The new audience found much in Shakespeare's plays to admire; but of special interest were the romantic and melodramatic aspects of the plays and the spectacle with which some of the managers interlarded them—the processions, the battles, the crowds, the tableaux, and especially the magnificent costumes and scenery.
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