Introduction: Performance and the Paper Stage, 1640–1700

Abstract

IntroductionPerformance and the Paper Stage, 1640–1700 Emma Depledge (bio) and Rachel Willie (bio) the second half of the seventeenth century was marked by attempts to limit access to the London theaters and by important developments in the trade in playbooks.1 The public theaters were closed when civil war broke out in 1642, and they remained closed for eighteen years. The punishments for performing plays during the ban were severe; as ordinances for theater closure state, punitive measures included the confiscation of profits and costumes, public whipping, arrests, and fines for audience members.2 The theaters were reopened shortly after the monarchy was restored in 1660, but only two playhouses were licensed for performance in London for most of the period 1660–1700, with their managers—William Davenant (Duke's Company) and Thomas Killigrew (King's Company)—to "suffer no rival companies."3 This was further reduced to just one theater from 1682 to 1695, and admission prices radically increased in comparison to the Elizabethan and Jacobean outdoor playhouses.4 Thus, although Restoration is used frequently to describe the supposedly simultaneous return of the monarchy and the theaters, for [End Page 1] many Londoners, the licensed theaters remained as inaccessible after 1660 as they had been during the ban on acting. As this special issue demonstrates, although state officials attempted to control when, where, and by whom theater could be produced and consumed, late seventeenth-century actors, managers, and audiences continuously sought out ways to defy the authorities and, in so doing, maintained a vibrant theatrical culture. Theater historians used to portray 1642–59 as a period in which theater became limited, elitist, and inert, but work by scholars including Janet Clare, Dale B. J. Randall, Rachel Willie, and Susan Wiseman has demonstrated that these years were instead marked by theatrical innovation, particularly in print culture as a dramatic form.5 Davenant (1606–1668) sought to circumvent the ban on stage plays by developing innovative methods of theatrical performance and by persuading the authorities to allow him to perform "moral entertainments," as exemplified by his Siege of Rhodes (1656), which contained recitative and other elements associated with the court masque and the development of English opera. An underground theater market also developed, in which new dramatic genres such as drolls, play ballads, play pamphlets, and dialogues, as well as the continued practice of dumb shows and dramatic commonplacing, helped to keep theatrical culture alive. These novel pieces were short and could be performed quickly to avoid detection by soldiers, or else they could be delivered privately without the need of professional actors or purposebuilt performance venues.6 There is evidence to suggest that these dramatic forms continued to flourish after 1660. In the early 1680s, the London-based playwright Elkanah Settle decided it would be expedient to take "one Coish [coach] & severall others to act some playes or Drolls in the citty of Yorke."7 As this example shows, performances took place beyond the capital, in York and also in places such as Norwich and "Sturbridge Fair" in Cambridge.8 Thus, it is important to recognize that [End Page 2] surreptitious performances took place during the midcentury ban on acting and that theater culture extended beyond the two patent theaters licensed to perform from the 1660s. Further, it is imperative to speak of theater histories in the plural to reflect the coexistence of state-sanctioned and underground theater culture as well as London and countrywide performances across the late seventeenth century. Actors and the Ban on Acting Prior to the ban on acting, in 1629, a French acting troupe performed at the Blackfriars playhouse. Their company followed Continental European practices and comprised female players, who met with a negative reception despite being admired at the English court.9 Evidently, English playgoers were not ready to experience women acting on the professional stage. Yet in 1656, Davenant obtained special permission to produce The Siege of Rhodes and cast Catherine Coleman to sing and act the part of Ianthe; it was first performed in the dining room of Davenant's home at Rutland House before transferring to the Cockpit theater in Drury Lane. Davenant was casting not only a female...