This text examines the changes made by eighteenth-century actor-manager David Garrick to Shakespeare's plays.

This book examines Shakespeare's influence and popularity in all aspects of eighteenth-century literature, culture and society.

Great Shakespeare Actors provides a series of well-informed, well-written, illuminating, and entertaining accounts of many of the most famous stage performers of Shakespeare in both England and America, offering a concise, actor-centred history of Shakespeare on the stage.

A history of the reception of Shakespeare on the English stage focusing on the vocal dimensions of theatrical performance.

Explores how David Garrick - actor, newspaper proprietor and part-owner of Drury Lane Theatre - mediated his own celebrity.

Beginning with the death of William Shakespeare in 1616, a study of the bard explores his evolution from provincial playwright to universally acclaimed, literary giant, beginning with his growing popularity during the late-seventeenth-century Restoration and ranging to the Stratford celebration of the tricentennial of Shakespeare's birth in 1864.

Book collecting, bibliomania and the eighteenth-century -- Building a library -- Garrick, book culture and The Club -- Collecting Shakespeare and other English dramatists -- Book-buying in France and Italy -- Dispersal -- Appendix A. Locations of Garrick's books -- Appendix B. Books to which Garrick subscribed -- Appendix C. Books addressed/dedicated to Garrick -- Appendix D. Lots purchased by Thomas Thorpe at the 1823 sale -- Appendix E. Garrick books formerly belonging to George Frederick Beltz -- Appendix F. Carrington Garrick's books

Winner of the 2019 Marfield Prize for Outstanding Writing About the Arts The remarkable, ridiculous, rain-soaked story of Shakespeare’s Jubilee: the event that established William Shakespeare as the greatest writer of all time. In September 1769, three thousand people descended on Stratford-upon-Avon to celebrate the artistic legacy of the town’s most famous son, William Shakespeare. Attendees included the rich and powerful, the fashionable and the curious, eligible ladies and fortune hunters, and a horde of journalists and profiteers. For three days, they paraded through garlanded streets, listened to songs and oratorios, and enjoyed masked balls. It was a unique cultural moment—a coronation elevating Shakespeare to the throne of genius. Except it was a disaster. The poorly planned Jubilee imposed an army of Londoners on a backwater hamlet peopled by hostile and superstitious locals, unable and unwilling to meet their demands. Even nature refused to behave. Rain fell in sheets, flooding tents and dampening fireworks, and threatening to wash the whole town away. Told from the dual perspectives of David Garrick, who masterminded the Jubilee, and James Boswell, who attended it, What Blest Genius? is rich with humor, gossip, and theatrical intrigue. Recounting the absurd and chaotic glory of those three days in September, Andrew McConnell Stott illuminates the circumstances in which William Shakespeare became a transcendent global icon.

This book examines Shakespearean adaptations through the critical lens of fan studies and asks what it means to be a fan of Shakespeare in the context of contemporary media fandom. Although Shakespeare studies and fan studies have remained largely separate from one another for the past thirty years, this book establishes a sustained dialogue between the two fields. In the process, it reveals and seeks to overcome the problematic assumptions about the history of fan cultures, Shakespeare’s place in that history, and how fan works are defined. While fandom is normally perceived as a recent phenomenon focused primarily on science fiction and fantasy, this book traces fans’ practices back to the eighteenth century, particularly David Garrick’s Shakespeare Jubilee in 1769. Shakespeare’s Fans connects historical and scholarly debates over who owns Shakespeare and what constitutes an appropriate adaptation of his work to online fan fiction and commercially available fan works.

Up until now, facts about theatrical rehearsal have been considered irrecoverable. But in this groundbreaking new study, Tiffany Stern gathers together two centuries' worth of historical material which shows how actors received and responded to their parts, and how rehearsal affected thecreation and revision of plays. Plotting theatrical change over time, from the mid-sixteenth to the late eighteenth century, this book will revolutionize the fields of textual and theatre history alike.