Context of British Theater before 1800

 

Medieval Drama

Renaissance (or Elizabethan) Drama


17th-century theater
Leacroft, Richard. The Development of the English Playhouse. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973.
http://westerntheatrehistory.com/EnglishMovements.aspx

Restoration through Eighteenth Century Drama


Based in part on Sean Elliot, Restoration Drama (London: Greenwich Exchange, 2013), 9.

In addition to the BBC links above, see this comparative timeline of the seventeenth century.



Restoration Comedy (ca. 1660-1780)

- Mistaken identity

- 2 (or more) lines of plot (cf. Dryden) usually involving young couples

- Carnival / masque

- Ending: Engagement/Marriage



The Restoration Actress


Samuel Pepys visited the Theatre Royal in Bridges Street in 1667, got a “backstage pass” to visit the actors, and wrote the following about the experience:


Nell Gwyn “was dressing herself and was all unready; and is very pretty, prettier than I thought; and so walked all up and down the House above, and then below into the Scene-room . . . But Lord, to see how they were both painted would make a man mad—and did make me loath them—and what base company of men comes among them, and how lewdly they talk—and how poor the men are in clothes, and yet what a show they make on the stage by candlelight is very observable” (qtd. in Diamond 523).


Diamond, Elin. “Gestus and Signature in Aphra Behn’s The Rover.” ELH. 56.3 (Autumn 1989): 519-41.