Derval Conroy concludes the focus in the collection on the seventeenth century with an examination of the printed text. The numerous accompanying elements included in printed plays – peritexts – were key to the reader’s reception, argues Conroy. Concentrating on two of these, dedications and prefaces/addresses, and in the light of recent scholarship regarding theatre and female agency – women as protagonists, dramatists, readers, spectators and patrons – Conroy accounts for the vital role played by peritexts in the economy of exchange, patronage, criticism and creation which characterized the early modern theatre world. After an examination of Françoise Pascal’s titlepages, her chapter focuses on how dedications to women validated women’s roles as cultural agents, creating spaces for the female reader–spectator–critic. Consideration is then given to prefaces by the women dramatists Françoise Pascal, Mme Ulrich, Catherine Bernard and Marie-Anne Barbier, and how they use these printed spaces to defend their work, their foray into the public space of playwriting, or more broadly their dramatic vision.

This introduction sets the stage for the different chapters of the volume by offering general considerations about the production and consumption of poetry in twelfth-century Byzantium.

It takes as its point of departure the period beginning from the moment that Alexios I Komnenos ascended the imperial throne in 1081 to the Latin sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. This period saw an unprecedented growth in the production of poetry, as well as various innovative literary developments, including the emergence of vernacular poetry, the extensive use of poetry for ceremonial and didactic purposes at the imperial court and beyond, and the mixing of poetry and prose in so-called schede. While many poets were active in Constantinople, a large amount of the surviving poetry was written in places far away from the Byzantine capital, particularly in southern Italy and Sicily. The introduction discusses the social and intellectual contexts of twelfth-century poetry, addresses issues of geographical distribution and material circulation, and introduces some of the key figures and texts of the Komnenian period.

The chapter looks at a substantial number of texts outside the boundaries usually placed in Byzantine Studies through conventional taxonomic categories such as genre or antithetic pairs like learned versus vernacular language. Four larger themes are used to explore this varied textual production and offer a proposal for understanding its basic socio-cultural and aesthetic functions for its immediate recipients and later readers. The four themes discussed are education and literature, patronage and literary production, rhetoric and genre in prose and poetry, narrative art from the enormous to the small. Despite the strong presence of ‘Hellenic’ subjects, Komnenian literature owes more to its own dynamism (deriving from a reformed teacherly practice in the schools) than to the imitation of ancient models. At the same time, the role of the patrons in promoting literary production shapes much of both learned and vernacular literary experimentation, while religious literature generously defined is strongly involved in an ongoing experimentation with form and content. Finally, the chapter asks whether any form of change can be traced within the literary production of the Komnenian era.

This chapter explores the rationales of the paratexts accompanying John Tzetzes’ commentary on Hermogenes in the bespoke copy contained in the Vossianus Gr. Q1. Besides clarifying the circumstances prompting that specific copy of the commentary, these paratexts scaffold Tzetzes’ authorial agency as well as his social role in a cultural economy based on patronage. The chapter also shows how they speak to the way Tzetzes exploits the inherent ambiguities of language and tradition, by looking at them as examples of enacted ἀμφοτερογλωσσία, resting on dialectic.

The chapter looks at twelfth-century Byzantine poetry in the context of the milieu in which most Byzantine literature was initially published: the social gatherings known as theatra in which writers performed their compositions before an invited audience, usually presided over by an aristocratic patron. Poetry was particularly suited to such ‘theatre’ performance, and theatra flourished in the twelfth century as never before. This chapter illustrates the dramatic subject matter, style and narrative technique of much twelfth-century verse composition, with particular attention to three texts: a ceremonial poem by Theodore Prodromos, Constantine Manasses’ Synoptic Chronicle and Constantine Stilbes’ lament on a devastating urban fire in 1197. The discussion then turns turns to the question of how far the ‘theatrical turn’ of twelfth-century Byzantine literature, in both poetry and prose, had the potential to develop into real theatre. The contention here is that Byzantine writers perfected the art of purely verbal dramatic representation as a conscious substitute for reviving the institution of ancient theatre in material form.

Chapter 1 chronicles how the distractibility of a king, the agency of objects, the desires that cloud judgment, and the memories that haunt the present shape events perhaps even more than ideology. Prior to the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the Duke of Newcastle proposed returning to a Caroline-style theatrical marketplace, but he was outmaneuvered by courtier-playwrights long accustomed to deploying networks of access. Contingency also determined outcomes. The particular circumstances of Charles II’s upbringing certainly benefited William Davenant and Thomas Killigrew, the two successful patentees. Unlike his royal predecessors, the new monarch regarded the commercial theatre as a gift to be bestowed upon persistent clients who would enjoy monopolistic control going forward. No one foresaw, of course, the economic repercussions of that gift, namely, how the transformation of the theatre from a purely commercial to a hybrid enterprise would require substantial support beyond the box office. Additionally, the duopoly so sought by Killigrew and Davenant exerted its own unexpected agencies. As the following chapters explore, its resulting economic and cultural logic galvanized a host of decisions about repertories and performance practices that would prove both innovative and ruinous.

Our Introduction traces the biography of John Cleland, the notorious and hitherto elusive eighteenth-century author, as we now see it through the letters and documents published in this volume. We follow his early career in Bombay, climbing the ranks of the East India Company, his prison writing of and subsequent re-arrest for Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, his volatile relationship with his mother, his disappointment in writing for the stage, his patronage by the Delaval family, and – new to Cleland scholarship – his intriguing friendship with Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont and the French spy Thomas Pichon, which reveals new attributions to Cleland and his attempted assimilation amongst a literary Francophone community as ‘Jean de Cleland’.

An overview of existing approaches to less powerful states’ strategies in international relations shows that no theory explains the behaviour described in the introduction. By most logics, they should evade international attention or, if they do approach larger actors with ulterior motives in mind, they should become socialized to valuing the norms they once invoked with cynicism. On no account should they draw the attention of larger actors whose global missions they not only undermine, but depend on undermining for domestic stability. This chapter introduces two scope conditions that begin to explain this conduct. Domestically, these states rule by patronage, a logic of rule that distributes money, jobs, political voice and physical security as privileges rather than by right. Internationally, they are peripheral, which means that they lack material and agenda-setting power in relation to other countries. As such, when patronage rule brings them into conflict with the global rights-based order, they cannot afford to change the offending practices, but neither can they withdraw or bear punishment. A historical account of political development in several post-colonial regions illustrates why peripherality and patronage, while they do not always overlap, correlate highly.

This chapter shows how a hierarchical organization and a dominant faction were crucial prerequisites for the strategy of instrumentalism. The union’s hierarchical structure enabled it to mobilize teachers in elections and a dominant faction enabled negotiations with political parties from across the ideological spectrum. The last section analyzes the political backlash against instrumentalism in 2013, which resulted in leadership turnover and policy changes that weakened the union overall. Despite this backlash, however, the union’s internal organization remained largely intact and union leaders continue to be ideologically flexible, in line with the main argument in this book.

This chapter investigates Caroline Watson’s understudied theatrical subjects which testify to her technical mastery and ambitious agenda as a printmaker and provide a lens for examining how gender, printmaking hierarchies, and patronage impacted her exceptional career as a female stipple engraver. Her prints of female Shakespearean characters, Garrick Speaking the Ode and Sarah Siddons as Euphrasia, after Robert Edge Pine, from the early 1780s, and her two large plates for Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery in the 1790s affiliated her with Shakespeare and the most significant artistic enterprise of the late eighteenth century. In terms of scale, narrative complexity, and narrative scope, Watson’s theatrical prints demonstrate her extraordinary skill as a stipple engraver and challenge gender and printmaking hierarchies. Appointed Engraver to the Queen in 1785, Watson signed her prints, publishing a number under her own name, and supported herself comfortably through her printmaking. Despite her professional achievement and technical prowess, her extended independent career was circumscribed by hierarchies of gender that paralleled artistic hierarchies.

The complex relationship between Wagner and Liszt has been much caricatured. Liszt is usually perceived as long-suffering, patient, and generous in his support, while Wagner appears self-serving and ruthless. This chapter unravels how their relationship was shaped by contemporary economic, political, and, artistic forces. In doing so, it observes the contrasting ways Liszt and Wagner attempted to reconcile revolutionary republican sympathies with their desire for royal patronage. It examines the advice and practical support Liszt provided Wagner through his position as Kapellmeister at the Weimar Court Theatre, Liszt’s ambitions to position his relationship with Wagner as equivalent to Goethe and Schiller within a new artistic ‘golden age’ in Weimar, and their differing responses to contemporary aesthetic debates. It highlights similarities and differences in their ideas about the future of music, the relationship between music and drama and its implications for musical form, and their compositional approaches.

A number of individual manuscripts which show unique or singular arrangements of ordines romani are discussed, located to Worms under Bishop Bernharius, and the instigation of a circle of bishops around Arn of Salzburg, who shared ordines with each other and with monasteries under their patronage. The chapter discusses the relation of these texts to pilgrim travel literature, from clergy who had been to Rome and observed and questioned the Roman clergy.

A series of unique ordines discussing particular ceremonies are compared. It is shown how the texts were most likely redacted and spread by Arn of Salzburg, the first archbishop of that city and of Bavaria. Arn made use of the texts to shore up, define and defend his legitimacy as metropolitan. The ordines all assumed a stational framework, showing how the appropriation of this system legitimised Frankish episcopal power over the city. The role of Arn of Salzburg in the confection of a new ordo for the ordination of a bishop is established via a manuscript in Vienna. This was the first detailed account of Frankish ordination practices. In the manuscript, it is revealed as part of Arn’s programme to establish himself.

The Conclusion offers final reflections on authorship, use and patronage of Ordo Romanus texts and manuscripts.