"Winkler and Schoch reveals how - and why - the first generation to stage Shakespeare after Shakespeare's lifetime changed absolutely everything. As leader of the Duke's Company, Davenant's influence on its approach to Shakespeare was profound and lasting. This book provides the first performance-based account of Restoration Shakespeare, exploring the precursors to Davenant's approach to Restoration Shakespeare, the cultural context of Restoration theatre, the theatre spaces in which the Duke's Company performed, Davenant's adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, acting styles, and the lasting legacy of Davenant's approach to staging Shakespeare"--

Eubanks Winkler and Schoch reveal how – and why – the first generation to stage Shakespeare after Shakespeare's lifetime changed absolutely everything. Founder of the Duke's Company, Sir William Davenant influenced how Shakespeare was performed in a profound and lasting way. This open access book provides the first performance-based account of Restoration Shakespeare, exploring the precursors to Davenant's approach to Restoration Shakespeare, the cultural context of Restoration theatre, the theatre spaces in which the Duke's Company performed, Davenant's adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, acting styles, and the lasting legacy of Davenant's approach to staging Shakespeare. The eBook editions of this work are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Queen's University Belfast.

Fourteen specially commissioned essays provide essential information about staging, playwrights, themes and genres in the drama of the Restoration.

First thorough biography of the colorful and gifted seventeenth-century playwright who was also the father of English opera, the first to use English actresses in his plays, and the creator of modern stage construction.

Renaissance Revivals examines patterns in the London revivals of two English Renaissance theatre genres over the past four centuries. Griswold's focus on revenge tragedies and city comedies illuminates the ongoing interaction between society and its cultural products. No cultural object is ever created anew, she argues, but is instead constructed from existing cultural genres and conventions, the visions and professional needs of the artist, and the interests of an audience. Thus, every "new play" is in part a renaissance and every "revival" is in part an entirely new cultural object.

This is a book intended to bring together all the theatrical figures buried and/or memorialised in Westminster Abbey. Most of them are in Poets’ Corner and the South Transept, but there are others dotted elsewhere around the Abbey and particularly in the Cloisters where Aphra Behn, the playwright, and most of the actresses are congregated. A major feature of the book is the spectacular collection of illustrations in the form of photographs of the monuments from the Abbey archive and portraits kindly provided by the Garrick Club. The text incorporates brief descriptions of the characters interspersed with a variety of more or less relevant (some completely irrelevant, but entertaining) anecdotes.

This book describes how and why women were permitted to act on the public stage after 1660 in England.

This title was first published in 2003. This collection of essays presents a variety of new approaches to the oeuvre of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, one of the most influential and controversial women writers of the seventeenth century. Reflecting the full range of Cavendish's output - which included poetry, drama, prose fictions, orations, and natural philosophy - these essays re-assess Cavendish's place in seventeenth- century literature and philosophy. Whilst approaching Cavendish's work from a range of critical (and disciplinary) perspectives, the authors of these essays are united in their commitment to recovering her writings from their frequent characterisation as "eccentric" or "idiosyncratic", and aim to present her work as historically legible within the cultural contexts in which they were written. The "Mad Madge" of literary legend and tradition is re-written as a bold, innovative and experimental creator of a female authorial voice, and as a thinker vitally in contact with the intellectual currents of her age.