Wars and Battles, Drama

Abstract

Though wars and battles had been one of the most common subjects of dramatic representation since antiquity, British drama of the Romantic era – in response to nearly 22 years of uninterrupted military conflict during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars (1793–1815) ‐offered a wide range of martial‐themed entertainments, from re‐enactments of famous events to plays that indirectly alluded to the geopolitical changes wrought by the French Revolution. Though a few plays staged at the patent theatres, Drury Lane and Covent Garden, in the summer and autumn of 1789 depicted revolutionary events, such as the storming of the Bastille, for the most part dramatists and theatre managers – prevented by government censors from directly representing revolutionary figures and events – indirectly referred to the tumult on the Continent by setting plays in historical circumstances that paralleled the political situation and ideological conflicts of the age. In the minor theatres, British victories in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars were represented in pageants, re‐enactments, mock naval battles, and pantomimes that employed new technology and satisfied a growing public desire for verisimilitude in theatrical entertainment.