The life cycle of the Restoration play

David Roberts

doi:10.1017/CBO9781139227100.003

2 - The life cycle of the Restoration play

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2014

David Roberts

Show author details

David Roberts: Affiliation:
Birmingham City University

Book contents

Get access

Summary

Managerial revolutions

In the midst of political regime change, theatre people contended with their own upheavals of leadership and culture. Competing managerial ideologies and practices, and financial success and failure, made Restoration Drama rich in allusions to what was, for all the comforts of royal patronage, a cut-throat business environment. 1660 saw the restoration not just of monarchy but of state-sponsored theatre, which had languished since the outbreak of civil war. A surprising amount of semi-official theatre survived during the 1650s amid the demolition of playhouses and army raids on unlicensed performances, but it was not until Charles II’s return that actors could work again under the sort of protection they had enjoyed during his father’s reign. Even so, opportunities were restricted, and deliberately.

Two licensed companies operating under the names of the king and the Duke of York maximized the chances of official control, and the managers who ran them did not flinch from using their duopoly to suppress unofficial competition. Sir William Davenant of the Duke’s Company (see below, pp. 93–6) and Thomas Killigrew of the King’s (see below, pp. 96–9) were genial rivals, charged with implementing Charles II’s Francophile tastes in theatre, but equally concerned with making their businesses profitable at a time when the total audience for London theatre probably numbered fewer than 30,000.

Information

Type: Chapter
Information: Restoration Plays and Players
An Introduction
, pp. 29 - 66

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139227100.003 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Randall, Dale R., Winter Fruit: English Drama 1642–1660 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1995).Google Scholar

Bush-Bailey, Gilli, Treading the Bawds (Manchester University Press, 2007).Google Scholar

Stubbes, Philip lamented the public theatres in his Anatomie of Abuses (London, 1583).Google Scholar

Jordan, Thomas, ‘Prologue, to introduce the first Woman that came to act on the Stage, in the tragedy called the Moor of Venice’, in his A Royal Arbour of Loyal Poesie (London, 1664),Google Scholar

Wilson, John Harold, All the King’s Ladies (University of Chicago Press, 1959), 6–8,Google Scholar

Howe, Elizabeth, The First English Actresses (Cambridge University Press, 1992), 24.Google Scholar

Peter Hall’s Diaries, ed. Goodwin, John (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1983), 311.Google Scholar

Marsden, Jean I., ‘Rape, voyeurism and the Restoration stage’, in Quinsey, Katherine M., ed., Broken Boundaries: Women and Feminism in Restoration Drama (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994), 185–200.Google Scholar

Payne, Deborah C. explores this duality: ‘Reified object or emergent professional? Retheorizing the Restoration actress’, in Canfield, J. Douglas and Payne, Deborah C., eds., Cultural Readings of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Theater (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995), 13–38.Google Scholar

Hughes, Derek, ‘Rape on the Restoration stage’, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 46 (2005), 225–36,Google Scholar

Scott, Virginia, Women on the Stage in Early Modern France 1540–1750 (Cambridge University Press, 2010)CrossRef Google Scholar

Thomson, Peter, Shakespeare’s Theatre, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 1992), 113.Google Scholar

Schama, Simon, Rembrandt’s Eyes (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 2000).Google Scholar

Griffiths, Paul, ‘Lost tradition,’ The Times, 9 February 1984, 10.

Cibber, Colley, An Apology for the Life of Mr Colley Cibber (London, 1740), 61–6.Google Scholar

Dryden, John, ‘Preface’, The Tempest, or, The Enchanted Island (London, 1670).CrossRef Google Scholar

Kewes, Paulina, Authorship and Appropriation: Writing for the Stage in England, 1660–1710 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998).CrossRef Google Scholar

Le Neve, John, The Lives and Characters of the Most Illustrious Persons British and Foreign (London, 1713), 534–5.Google Scholar

Burling, William J., Summer Theatre in London, 1661–1800 (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000).Google Scholar

Stern, Tiffany, Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan (Oxford University Press, 2000), 140.Google Scholar

Nicoll, Allardyce, A History of Restoration Drama 1660–1700, 4th edn (Cambridge University Press, 1950), 308.Google Scholar

anon., ‘A Satyr Against Poetry’, in de Voiture, Vincent, Familiar Letters of Love, Gallantry, and Several Occasions, 2 vols. (London, 1718), vol. I, 92.Google Scholar

Gildon, Charles’s The Life of Mr Thomas Betterton, the Late Eminent Tragedian (London, 1719), 15.Google Scholar

Behn, Aphra, ‘Preface’, The Dutch Lover (London, 1673);Google Scholar

Shakespeare, , ed. Jenkins, Harold, Hamlet (London: Methuen, 1982), III.ii.35, 9;Google Scholar

Farquhar, George, The Recruiting Officer (London, 1706), 24 (II.iii.215–18);Google Scholar

D’Urfey, Thomas, ‘Preface’, The Banditti (London, 1686), a3b.Google Scholar

Granville, George, ‘Preface’, Heroick Love (London, 1698), A2;Google Scholar

Dawson, Mark S.’s fine study, Gentility and the Comic Theatre of Late Stuart London (Cambridge University Press, 2005).Google Scholar

Dryden, John, Sir Martin Mar-All (London, 1668), 24.Google Scholar

Tate, Nahum, The History of King Lear (London, 1681), 67 (V.vi.148–52),Google Scholar

Clark, Sandra, ed., Shakespeare Made Fit: Restoration Adaptations of Shakespeare (London: Dent, 1997).Google Scholar

De Sayncton, , The History of Tamerlan the Great, trans. D’Assigny, (London, 1679).Google Scholar

Etherege, George, The Man of Mode, or, Sir Fopling Flutter (London, 1676), 28 (II.ii.218–53).Google Scholar

Wilmot, John, Earl of Rochester, ‘Song’, in Rochester: Complete Poems and Plays, ed. Lyons, Paddy (London: Dent, 1993).Google Scholar

Dennis, John, In Defence of Sir Fopling Flutter (London, 1722), 18.Google Scholar

Mulvey, Laura, ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’, Screen 16 (1975), 6–18.CrossRef Google Scholar

Roach, Joseph, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 75.Google Scholar

Dryden, , see his ‘Epistle Dedicatory’, The Rival Ladies (London, 1664).CrossRef Google Scholar

Howard, Robert (with John Dryden), The Indian Queen, in Five New Plays (London, 1692), 115.Google Scholar

Marsden, Jean I., ‘Tragedy and varieties of serious drama’, in Owen, Susan J., ed., A Companion to Restoration Drama (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 228–42, 232.Google Scholar

Canfield, J. Douglas, Heroes and States: On the Ideology of Restoration Tragedy (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000), 24.Google Scholar

Orr, Bridget’s invaluable study, Empire on the English Stage, 1660–1714 (Cambridge University Press, 2001).Google Scholar

Purcell, Henry, The Indian Queen, cond. Deller, Alfred (Paris: Harmonia Mundi, 1976).Google Scholar

Accessibility standard: Unknown

Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.