Michael R. Booth

Three tragic actresses : Siddons, Rachel, Ristori

List of illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction Sarah Siddons Michael R. Booth Rachel Felix John Stokes Adelaide Ristori Susan Bassnett Notes Select bibliography Index.

East End and West End: Class and Audience in Victorian London

Surveys of nineteenth-century drama and theatre in England fall approximately into two categories: an examination of the development of the drama itself – tragedy, comedy, melodrama, farce, etc. – with some theatrical context provided, and a study of changing theatrical conditions, with some reference to the drama. In both cases what we are told about the theatre relates to acting, architecture, methods of production, lighting, costuming, company organisation, the actor-manager, and so forth. Never, or hardly ever, are we told anything about audiences: what kind of audiences went to what theatres, what their class was, what jobs they did, how much they got paid, what their non-theatrical tastes were, how often they went to the theatre, where they lived and under what conditions. Such information, however, is essential if we are fully to understand the repertory or style of a particular theatre at a particular time in history, and ultimately the character and content of the drama itself.

The landscape of melodrama

Abstract This article is concerned with the kind of scenic environment and stage settings used to depict the rural landscape (and the people in it) in the popular English 19th century melodrama, and examines the function of both the sublime and picturesque forms of stage landscape, as well as that of natural catastrophe.

Shakespeare as Spectacle and History: The Victorian Period

The changes in social composition and cultural taste that came over theatre audiences in the late eighteenth century and in the first decades of the nineteenth century had a profound effect upon their attitude to, and consequently the production of, Shakespeare. The social mix of the London playhouse remained relatively unchanged through much of the eighteenth century. Within a fairly small auditorium the aristocratic and upper middle-class gentility of the boxes and the bourgeois respectability of the pit effectively dictated a style of drama and performance that most appealed to the tastes of this, the most dominant audience group. Combined with the limitations imposed upon the techniques of production by an adequate but undeveloped technology and the social stability provided by the slow pace of political and industrial evolution, the early and mid-Georgian theatre (including Shakespeare) preserved a remarkably uniform structure and dramatic viewpoint over a long period.