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Excerpt from Their Majesties' Servants, 1890, Vol. 1 of 2: Annals of the English Stage, From Thomas Betterton to Edmund Kean; Actors, Authors, Audiences At the great festivals, when the theatres were opened, the ex penses, of the representations were borne partly by the state and partly by certain wealthy officials. The, admission was free, until over-crowding produced fatal accidents. To diminish the latter, an entrance-fee of two oboli, 3}d., was established, but the receipts were made over to the poor. From morning till dewy eve these roofless buildings, capable of containing, on an average, twenty thousand persons, were filled from the ground to the topmost seat, in the sweet spring - tide, sole theatrical season of the Greeks. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This book offers an innovative account of how audiences and actors emotionally interacted in the English theatre during the middle decades of the eighteenth century, a period bookended by two of its stars: David Garrick and Sarah Siddons. Drawing upon recent scholarship on the history of emotions, it uses practice theory to challenge the view that emotional interactions between actors and audiences were governed by empathy. It carefully works through how actors communicated emotions through their voices, faces and gestures, how audiences appraised these performances, and mobilised and regulated their own emotional responses. Crucially, this book reveals how theatre spaces mediated the emotional practices of audiences and actors alike. It examines how their public and frequently political interactions were enabled by these spaces.