This comprehensive volume lists and describes all known eighteen century British and Irish promptbooks. Each entry includes the location of the copy, shelf mark, production for which the prompt-book was prepared (theatre, date, prompter's name, if known), the types of notes the copy contains (description of setting, entrance notes, costume notes, ground plans, warnings, cues, stage movement, line interpretation), and citations of any books or articles that have dealt with the copy. The illustrations of sample pages from some of the promptbooks listed will provide the reader with a fuller and more accurate understanding of eighteenth century theatre architecture and staging practices.

This comprehensive volume lists and describes all known eighteen century British and Irish promptbooks. Each entry includes the location of the copy, shelf mark, production for which the prompt-book was prepared (theatre, date, prompter's name, if known), the types of notes the copy contains (description of setting, entrance notes, costume notes, ground plans, warnings, cues, stage movement, line interpretation), and citations of any books or articles that have dealt with the copy. The illustrations of sample pages from some of the promptbooks listed will provide the reader with a fuller and more accurate understanding of eighteenth century theatre architecture and staging practices.

Great art is about emotion. In the eighteenth century, and especially for the English stage, critics developed a sensitivity to both the passions of a performance and what they called the transitions between those passions. It was these pivotal transitions, scripted by authors and executed by actors, that could make King Lear beautiful, Hamlet terrifying, Archer hilarious and Zara electrifying. James Harriman-Smith recovers a lost way of appreciating theatre as a set of transitions that produce simultaneously iconic and dynamic spectacles; fascinating moments when anything seems possible. Offering fresh readings and interpretations of Shakespearean and eighteenth-century tragedy, historical acting theory and early character criticism, this volume demonstrates how a concern with transition binds drama to everything, from lyric poetry and Newtonian science, to fine art and sceptical enquiry into the nature of the self.

The 18th century in Britain was a transition period for literature. Patronage, either by a benefactor or through subscription, lingered even as the publishing and bookselling industries developed. The practice of reviewing books became well established during the second half of the century, with the first periodical founded in 1749. For the literary scholar, these gradual changes mean that different search strategies are required to conduct research into primary and secondary source material across the era. Literary Research and the British Eighteenth Century addresses these unique challenges. It examines how the following all contribute to the richness of literary research for this era: book and periodical publishing; a growing literate society; dissemination of literature through salons, private societies, and coffee houses; the growing importance of book reviews; the explosion of publishing; and the burgeoning of primary source material available through new publishing and digital initiatives in the 21st century. This volume explores primary and secondary resources, including general literary research guides; union library catalogs; print and online bibliographies; scholarly journals; manuscripts and archives; 18th-century books, newspapers, and periodicals; contemporary reception; and electronic texts and journals, as well as Web resources. Each chapter addresses the research methods and tools best used to extract relevant information and compares and evaluates sources, making this book an invaluable guide to any literary scholar and student of the British eighteenth century.

Study of the theories and methods informing editions of Milton and Shakespeare in the eighteenth century.

In 1700, Shakespeare was viewed as one of the leading Renaissance playwrights, but not as supreme. By 1800, he was not only widely performed and read but celebrated as a universal genius and a national literary hero. What happened during the intervening years is the subject of this fascinating volume, which brings together Renaissance and eighteenth-century scholars who examine how Shakespeare gradually penetrated, and came to dominate, the culture and intellectual life of people in the English-speaking world. The contributors approach Shakespeare from a wide range of perspectives, to illuminate the way contemporary philosophy, science and medicine, textual practice, theatre studies, and literature both informed and were influenced by eighteenth-century interpretations of his works. Among the topics are Falstaff and eighteenth-century ideas of the sublime, David Garrick's 1756 adaptation of The Winter's Tale and its relationship to medical theories of femininity, the textual practices of George Steevens, Shakespeare's importance in furthering the careers of actors on the eighteenth-century stage, and the influence of Shakespeare on writers as diverse as Edmund Burke, Horace Walpole, and Ann Radcliff. Together, the essays paint a vivid picture of the relationship between eighteenth-century Shakespeare and ideas about shared nationhood, knowledge, morality, history, and the self.

Performing Restoration Shakespeare embraces the performative and musical qualities of Restoration Shakespeare (1660–1714), drawing on the expertise of theatre historians, musicologists, literary critics, and - importantly - theatre and music practitioners. The volume advances methodological debates in theatre studies and musicology by advocating an alternative to performance practices aimed at reviving 'original' styles or conventions, adopting a dialectical process that situates past performances within their historical and aesthetic contexts, and then using that understanding to transform them into new performances for new audiences. By deploying these methodologies, the volume invites scholars from different disciplines to understand Restoration Shakespeare on its own terms, discarding inhibiting preconceptions that Restoration Shakespeare debased Shakespeare's precursor texts. It also equips scholars and practitioners in theatre and music with new - and much needed - methods for studying and reviving past performances of any kind, not just Shakespearean ones.

George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham (1628-1687) was one of the most scandalous and controversial figures of the Restoration period. He was the principal author of The Rehearsal (1671), an enormously successful burlesque play that ridiculed John Dryden and the rhymed heroic drama. Historians remember Buckingham as an opponent who helped topple Clarendon from power in 1667, as a member of the 'Cabal' government in the early 1670s, and as an ally of the Earl of Shaftesbury in the political crisis of 1678-1683. The duke was prominent among the 'court wits' (Rochester, Etherege, Sedley, Dorset, Wycherley, and their circle); he was closely associated with such writers as Butler and Cowley; he was a conspicuous champion of religious toleration and a friend of William Penn. No edition of Buckingham has been published since 1775, partly because his work presents horrendous attribution problems. He was (probably) adapter or co-author of six plays (two of them vastly successful for more than a century) including one in French that appears here in English for the first time. He is also associated with nine topical pieces (variously political, religious, and satiric) and some twenty poems of wildly varying type. The 'Buckingham' commonplace book has previously been published only in fragmentary form. Almost all of these works present major difficulties in both attribution and annotation, here seriously addressed for the first time. This edition is a companion venture to Harold Love's important edition of Rochester (OUP, 1999).

This is the second of three volumes of plays by Henry Fielding, whose vibrant early career in theatre has been overshadowed by his later fame as the author of novels like Tom Jones. The edition makes his plays, and his rich gift for theatrical comedy, accessible for the first time in modern form.

Bespr. in Book collector 57(2008)4