The young Swedish artist Nicodemus Tessin, traveling through Italy in 1687, records seeing a scene at the Teatro SS. Luca (also known as the Teatro San Salvatore) in Venice in which the spaces between the side wings were filled in to enclose the playing space, to form what has become known as a box setting. He even drew a sketch (fig. 1), explaining how the wings were “turned back” to enclose the space. He describes a book flat attached to a chariot; when the chariot was moved to its onstage position, stagehands swiftly swung the hinged section of the book flat backward until it joined the next chariot to the rear.

During the 1920's China was undergoing great political and social change. The Republican government under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen struggled against warlord factions and watched the birth of the Communist Party of China (1921). It was a time of turmoil and unrest, as newspapers headlined frightening incidents of murder, banditry, illegal taxation, military skirmishes and plundering. Added to China's problems was the recent appearance on her rivers of boat patrols by foreign governments who vowed to protect their commercial interests at any cost. That presence was an embarrassing, even an insulting situation. Finally, on the eve of 1924, Sun Yat-sen announced that China would look toward Russia for help. China would turn away from the West—particularly Britain, America, France and Germany, all of whom had participated in the division of China into foreign legations and treaty ports after the Opium War (1840–42) and had enjoyed great economic advantages as a consequence.

In the Age of Enlightenment, prominent critics and theorists called for an innovative program that would significantly affect the nature, status and future of the German theatre. Johann Elias Schlegel in 1747, Christian Fürchtegott Gellert in 1751, Johann Friedrich Löwen in 1766 and Gotthold Ephriam Lessing in 1767 variously urged the creation of permanent national theatres with resident artists on established salaries, subsidized by the wealthy or by the state. To those working in the uncertain world of semiprofessional companies, criss-crossing central Europe in search of friendly cities or courts with paying audiences, it was a logical idea. Remarkably, it came to be accepted and realized, first in Vienna, then in Mannheim, Weimar, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, all the major capitals and cities of the fragmented German states. It was an important advance, not only for the sake of the German theatre, but also for its performers because they were accorded the status of Beamten, or civil servants, in these new state theatres. Yet the Beamten classification allowed for an action unforeseen by Schlegel, Gellert, Löwen or Lessing: a hostile government could punish segments of its civil service it deemed offensive by forcing retirement.

Several traditional views have dominated the attitude of literary and theatre historians towards eighteenth century English drama. The most influential perspective has been that of Allardyce Nicoll, who lists plays, discovers coherent schools of playwriting, and traces chronology as if it were causality. A second approach looks at the century as a gallery of worthy dramatists, one hanging beside the other: Farquhar, Addison, Steele, Gay, Lillo, Goldsmith, and Sheridan. This approach is exemplified in F.S. Boas's Introduction to Eighteenth Century Drama, an appreciation of the tall peaks which tends to ignore the broad valleys.

The origins and early development of American vaudeville remain shrouded in the fog of nineteenth-century theatre history. Most historical accounts focus upon the evolution of vaudeville from entertainments performed in honky-tonks, beer gardens, and “concert saloons” of the 1860s and 1870s. Itinerant artists were hired to keep customers in a drinking mood with jigs, songs, acrobatics, and jokes. According to Douglas Gilbert, the audience for “variety,” as the sum of these peripatetic performers was then called, consisted of “tosspots, strumpets, dark-alley lads, and shimmers.” Few “respectable” men would dare venture into such places because of the drunkenness of the audience and the salacious nature of the entertainment.

Firmin Gémier rose to the top rank of twentieth century French actors with a versatile talent that led to simultaneous success in the bourgeois commercial theatres of the boulevards, the elite independent theatres of the back streets, and the tawdry working class theatres of the suburbs. His historical reputation rests on his early career with Antoine's Théâtre-libre, and later accomplishments such as founding the Théâtre National Populaire, creating the role of Père Ubu, and tutoring Gaston Baty and Charles Dullin. Still, Gémier's work is seldom discussed and it is too easy to forget the major role he played in advocating the democratization of French theatre, a role he was uniquely suited to play given his eclecticism and willingness to popularize the Théâtre-libre style. He took middle ground between the elitism of Antoine and the commercialism of Sasha Guitry and encouraged later generations of theatre artists to actively seek an ever-widening audience.

In 1837 William Leggett, one of the foremost American politicans and journalists of the 1830s and 1840s, wrote of Homer and Shakespeare: Walt Whitman, who certainly revered Shakespeare and frequently acknowledged Shakespeare's influence, also regarded his work as “poisonous to the idea of the pride and dignity of the common people, the life-blood of democracy.” Whitman's and Leggett's pronouncements are typical of the simultaneous admiration and disapproval with which many other democrats in an emerging American culture approached Shakespeare in the nineteenth century.

Jesse James was shot on April 3, 1882. By the next theatrical season three different companies were presenting the story of the James gang to New York audiences.

Drama about American frontier figures was nothing new; late nineteenth century audiences were enamoured of tales of the frontier. Frank Murdoch's Davy Crockett, in which Frank Mayo starred for over twenty years, and William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody's Wild West show, which played for over thirty years, were but the most famous and successful of the hundreds of plays, lectures, exhibitions, and demonstrations about frontier life that regaled theatre patrons.

On 14 March 1892, dedicated theatregoers in Cleveland, Ohio, found themselves facing a difficult decision: the city's two major touring houses were presenting similar star performers in superficially similar plays. One actress was an old acquaintance, having made regular appearances in Cleveland for more than a decade. The other was making her Cleveland debut, although she was a highly publicized, world-famous star. As the debutante was performing in French and the old favorite played in English—even though an English heavily accented by French—not surprisingly, the larger audience opted for their native tongue.

In the papers of Sir Robert Walpole now deposited in the Cambridge University Library, there is an information prepared in 1724 by the office of the Attorney General for the prosecution of a number of players at the Court of King's Bench. This document provides insights not only into the climate of theatrical censorship at the time but also into the nature of the dramatic presentations at London street fairs such as this one at Bartholomew Fair in Smithfield. The actors and actresses involved were for the most part well-known professionals on the London stage. The offending dramatic vehicle, heretofore known only by its title as advertised in the periodical press, was a short comedy or droll called “The Prodigal Son,” based on the familiar parable in Luke's gospel (15: 11–32).

J. T. Grein's Independent Theatre has long been considered the counterpart to Antoine's Théâtre Libre and Brahm's Freie Bühne: a subscription-based theatre introducing experimental drama to a coterie audience in the 1890s. However, just as in Paris there were rival production groups such as Paul Fort's Théâtre d'Art, so in London Grein was not the sole purveyor of the new drama. He had many individual competitors, the most important of whom were women who produced primarily the plays of Henrik Ibsen.

The Baltimore Company of Comedians which had performed openly and successfully in Maryland since 1782 attempted to gain a foothold in the traditionally hostile state of Pennsylvania in November, 1783. The troupe's manager, Dennis Ryan, petitioned the Pennsylvania legislature to rescind its statute prohibiting plays. When his petition was denied, he produced three evenings' entertainment through the use of a clever subterfuge: The Temple of Apollo, a play and pantomime disguised as a concert, reading, and dance. Although Ryan's ruse was clever, it was not wholly successful: he and his actors had to take precipitous leave of Philadelphia when a riot swept through the house during the last of their three scheduled performances and alerted the sheriff to their activities. Nevertheless, Ryan was the first actor-manager to attempt to evade post-revolutionary legislative opposition to theatre by making plays appear non-theatrical.

On May 5, 1921, Eleanora Duse presented her second debut, performing the part of Ellida in Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea at the Teatro Balbo in Turin. Her re-appearance at sixty-three, after an absence of twelve years, was a moment of extraordinary excitement, and when “Ellida” set foot on stage, she was greeted with a ten minute ovation. La Duse had retired in 1909, with no intention of ever performing again. Many praised her for leaving the boards at the height of a stunning career, ensuring an enduring image. And, indeed, it is the Eleanora Duse of the first career that is generally remembered, even today. Nevertheless, her second career, risking the destruction of that earlier image, serves to illumine much about the nature of her art, for her endeavor was to bring to the Italian stage a sweeping reform.

While researching my dissertation topic, “Edwin Booth: Theatre Manager,” I happened upon a previously unpublished letter written by Booth to a Jno. M. Leavitt. In this letter, Booth gives a contemporary and perhaps surprising evaluation of Dion Boucicault's playwriting, he articulates a set of guidelines for playwrights, and his comments on playwriting indicate a theory of play production which actually guided Booth's own work as actor-manager of Booth's Theatre from 1869 to 1873.

I would like to make an addition to Walter J. and Ruth I. Meserve's “The Stage History of Roar China: Documentary Drama as Propaganda,” Theatre Survey, 21 (May 1980), 1–11. The propagandistic qualities of Tretiakov's play can be seen in a production I mention in my article “Theatrical Activities in Nazi Concentration Camps,” Performing Arts Journal, 1 no. 2 (Fall 1976), 3–11. In 1944 an inmate of the Polish concentration camp in Czestochowa, Shie Tigel, was allowed to organize theatrical activities. Tigel, who had been an actor in the Warsaw Yiddish theatres, was allowed to construct “a special barrack for theatre with a stage, curtains, and light reflectors.”

Readers of Grace King's New Orleans may recall that the first play ever performed in French Louisiane was The Indian Father, a tragedy inspired by an incident during the Marquis de Vaudreuil's administration and performed in the Governor's mansion in 1753. A Colapissa Indian fled to New Orleans after killing a Choctaw, whose relatives followed and demanded the murderer. When the Colapissa escaped, his father offered his own life in atonement in place of his son. A Choctaw chief then struck off his head.