The five plays included in this volume William Wycherley's "The Country Wife," Sir George Etherege's "The Man of Mode," William Congreve's "The Way of the World," Sir Richard Steele's "The Conscious Lovers" and Richard B. Sheridan's "The School for Scandal" are the most distinguished comedies written during an especially exciting and innovative period in the London theater and English society. This Norton critical edition offers an authoritative text for each play and a unique collection of documents and critical essays (ranging from Charles Lamb to the present) for a deeper understanding of them.

Ranging in approach from feminist to historicist, the eleven essays in this collection share the culturalist premise that the drama of late Stuart and early Georgian England helped to constitute the dominant ideology of the period. The contributors' varied approaches allow for the reconsideration of libertinism, the politics of sexual desire, and other classic issues, as well as such newer concerns as the social construction of the first English actresses, empiricism as an emergent epistemological discourse, cultural anxiety about novelty and repetition, and shifting tropes of inherent worth. By reading well-known works in unexpected ways and focusing on less frequently studied dramatists, from Sedley, Motteux, Pix, and Behn to Manley, Trotter, and Shadwell, the contributors also test the limits of the canon. In addition, they suggest that earlier critical perceptions, perhaps even more than the “innate worth” of the plays, determined the shape of the canon. These essays present a different image of Restoration and eighteenth-century theater, one that reveals how the drama was a site as important for the negotiation of cultural meaning as were novels and verse satires.

Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Poetry 1660-1780, originally published in 1981, considers poetry written between 1660 and 1780, a period which, although largely recovered from its nineteenth-century reputation, still attracts widely varying critical responses. Abandoning the old labels such as ‘neoclassicism’, ‘romanticism’ and ‘sensibility’, the author focuses on descriptions of genres and their formal elements and traces the broader patterns of literary and historical change running through the period. Eric Rothstein describes different poetic modes- panegyric, satire, pastoral and topographical poetry, the epistle, and the ode- to suggest their aesthetical possibilities as well as their process of change. He also considers style and the uses of the past, topics which have often caused particular problems for the students of the period. What becomes clear is the extraordinary originality, flexibility and power with which Restoration and eighteenth-century poets handles the stylistic assumptions and the body of poems they inherited and employed in their own works.

The Routledge Anthology of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Performance brings together a selection of particularly memorable performances, beginning with Nell Gwyn in a 1668 staging of Secret Love, and moving chronologically towards the final performance of John Philip Kemble's controversial adaptation of Thomas Otway's Venice Presever'd in October 1795. This volume contains a wealth of contextual materials, including contemporary reviews, portraits, advertisements, and cast lists. By privileging event over publication, this collection aims to encourage an understanding of performance that emphasizes the immediacy - and changeability - of the theatrical repertoire during the long eighteenth century. Offering an invaluable insight into the performance culture of the time, The Routledge Anthology of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Performance is a unique, much-needed resource for students of theatre.

This book deals with changing conditions and conceptions of authorship in the long eighteenth century, a period said to have witnessed the birth of the modern author. Challenging claims about the public sphere and the professional writer, it engages with recent work on print culture and the history of the book and takes up such under-treated topics as the forms of literary careers and the persistence of the Renaissance “republic of letters” into the “age of authors.”

What were the causes of Restoration drama's licentiousness? How did the elegantly-turned comedy of Congreve become the pointed satire of Fielding? And how did Sheridan and Goldsmith reshape the materials they inherited? In the first account of the entire period for more than a decade, Richard Bevis argues that none of these questions can be answered without an understanding of Augustan and Georgian history. The years between 1660 and 1789 saw considerable political and social upheaval, which is reflected in the eclectic array of dramatic forms that is Georgian theatre's essential characteristic.

This first comprehensive compilation of twentieth-century scholar­ship in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century drama provides a basis for future research and is an invaluable reference work. Items are arranged alphabetically under general headings--e.g., acting, criticism, periodicals, music, theology--as well as alphabetically by surname of actor, actress, dramatist, musician, etc. Copiously indexed.

The Routledge Anthology of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Drama brings together the work of key playwrights from 1660 to 1800, divided into three main sections: Restoring the Theatre: 1660–1700 Managing Entertainment: 1700–1760 Entertainment in an Age of Revolutions: 1760–1800 Each of the 20 plays featured is accompanied by an extraordinary wealth of print and online supplementary materials, including primary critical sources, commentaries, illustrations, and reviews of productions. Taking in the spectrum of this period’s dramatic landscape—from Restoration tragedy and comedies of manners to ballad opera and gothic spectacle—The Routledge Anthology of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Drama is an essential resource for students and teachers alike.

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.