Restoration Theatre Research Articles

Animals in Restoration Theatre, 1660–1710

ABSTRACT Performing animals in Restoration theatre have seldom been the focal point of research. Exceptions include Michael Burden’s “Dancing Monkeys at Dorset Garden,” which examined the possible use of live monkeys in Henry Purcell’s opera The Fairy-Queen (1692), and Rafael Portillo’s “Staging Restoration Dramas,” a portion of which is dedicated to animals on the stage. This article provides a survey of animals on the Restoration stage and demonstrates the survival of a meaningful amount of evidence to suggest that live animals were employed more often than has hitherto been believed. It further argues that animals made a significant contribution to theatrical productions of the Restoration period.

Dramaturgy and the Plausible Wonder in Restoration Fiction, 1660–1670

Mackenzie’s roman-à-clef Aretina (1660) seems to foresee or, indeed, to capture the reopening of theatres when, at the end of Book 1, a group of actors present a monster (and a show) “upon a stage, whereon the Commedians used to act,” and the narrator subsequently summarises the performance taking place on the palace’s neglected stage. Nevertheless, the reopening of theatres had little or no immediate influence on the new English prose fiction published in the 1660s. As far as prose fiction is concerned, scholarly criticism about the Restoration theatre–novel interface addresses the period after—not before—1670. Yet, if areas of intersection are investigated, then a spectrum of quite different, isolated instances will emerge; from Margaret Cavendish’s remarks on her contemporary plays to events inspired by theatrical contrivances. This article therefore seeks to explore the presence of theatre and dramaturgy in the new English fiction published in the early years of the Restoration. The first part offers a comprehensive survey of theatrical thumbprints in this corpus of texts by considering the issues raised in literary criticism on the topic, such as dialogues, epistles and soliloquies, historical novels and first-person narratives. The second part pinpoints the episodes in high romances where wonder is no longer caused by magic, enchantment or any other supernatural intervention, but arises from calculated staging effects and devices. Authors of romances in the early years of the Restoration period contributed to the development of the English novel by making the moments of wonder more spectacular for characters, and more credible for readers, in line with the emerging scientific culture.

Theatrical Adaptation of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People in Iran: The Intellectual and Modernity in Akbar Radi’s The Decline

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsRamin FarhadiRAMIN FARHADI is a PhD candidate in Drama at Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama, the University of Manchester, UK. He has research expertise in Anglo-American Theatres, Global Shakespeare, Modern European Drama, and Film Studies. His current research is the critical examination of gender, politics, and civil dissidence in Shakespearean adaptations and appropriations in contemporary Iranian theatre within the context of censorship and conservatism. E-mail: ramin.farhadi@postgrad.manchester.ac.ukNotes1 According to Mirsepassi (2000 Mirsepassi, Ali. 2000. Intellectual Discourse and the Politics of Modernization: Negotiating Modernity in Iran. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 19), the term enlightenment signifies the “universal and normative standards of human behavior and ethics based on a rational, democratic, and humanist model of society”. Enlightenment includes notions and ideals centered on human value and happiness, such as tolerance, liberty, knowledge acquisition, self-consciousness, and the rule of law. Since the turn of the twentieth century, Iranians have adopted the same conception of the foregoing term due to their experience of living under undemocratic governments. The reflection and promotion of enlightenment and its notions can be seen in modern Iranian drama, in which there has been emphasis on truth, self-awareness, and rationalism in the theaters of Akbar Radi and Gholam-Hossein Sae’di in particular (Zahedi 2006 Zahedi, Farindokht. 2006. Henrik Ibsen and Iranian Modern Drama: Reception and Influence. Oslo: Oslo Academic Press. [Google Scholar], chs. 1 & 5).2 In the late nineteenth century Iran, many Iranian academics and scholars, who had their qualifications from European academic institutions, began to negotiate the principles of modernity and democracy in Persia (now Iran). Their pro-democratic movement resulted in the occurrence of the Constitutional Revolution in 1906, which established the first parliament in the country, restricted the Shah’s power, and introduced radical changes in different sectors and fields in politics, social life, education, literature, and legislation. The Revolution was finally defeated when Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar put an end to the rule of constitution and bombarded the parliament with canons in 1908, with the support of Russian and British governments. To read the full account of the Revolution and its rise and fall, see Ansari 2016 Ansari, Ali (Ed.). 2016. Iran’s Constitutional Revolution of 1906: Narratives of the Enlightenment. London: Gingko Library. [Google Scholar].3 For detailed information regarding the theater and cinema adaptations, and stage productions of Ibsen’s plays, including An Enemy of the People, consult the following link: https://ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/pages/search4 Originally a biological and agricultural term, domestication or domesticization in adaptation theory refers to the process of localizing the source text to conform to cultural traditions and meanings of the local audience (Bickley and Stevens 2021 Bickley, Pamela, and Jenny Stevens. 2021. Studying Shakespeare Adaptation: From Restoration Theatre to YouTube. London: Bloomsbury.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). Through domestication, the adaptor may transfer the cultural meanings of the original work to the new audience and environment, making the source text more familiar and understandable.

The New Claret-Club: Advertising, Self-Fashioning, and an Addition to the Canon of Scottish Restoration Theatre

ABSTRACT The traditional view of theatre in Restoration Scotland is that Presbyterian disapproval all but suffocated anything akin to the revival of playwriting and playgoing witnessed south of the border. This article highlights an addition to the slim canon of seventeenth-century Scottish theatre that provides nuance to this picture. The New Claret-Club: or, The Entertainments of Jack Jolly, Tam True-Wit, Peter Prudence, Symon Scruple, and Frank Furthy (1669) was until recently unknown to the field and contains hitherto forgotten details about theatre culture in Restoration Scotland. This article argues that The New Claret-Club was written by the founder of the first commercial theatre in Scotland following the Restoration, Thomas St. Serfe (or Sydserf) in order to advertise that theatre and increase his own celebrity through self-fashioning. It then provides a full annotated edition of The New Claret-Club.

The Country Wife, Southall Style: Restoration Comedy and the Multicultural Gaze

Abstract First performed at Watford Palace Theatre in 2004, Tanika Gupta’s version of William Wycherley’s The Country Wife (1675) relocates the Restoration classic to twenty-first-century London, reframing its libertine plot as a witty satire on sexual and gender mores in contemporary Britain. In this new setting, Wycherley’s comic masterpiece is revisited from a multicultural perspective, and his merciless exposure of social hypocrisies becomes infused with the adaptor’s keen awareness of diversity and its complexities. This article draws attention to Gupta’s play as a culturally significant intervention in the reception history of Restoration theatre culture. By opening up Wycherley’s comedy to the representation of Britain’s “new ethnicities,” I suggest, Gupta’s work has paved the way for the more inclusive, multiculturally conscious approach to the Restoration canon that is observable in the new spate of revivals and adaptations produced during the last decade or so.

Book review: Studying Shakespeare Adaptation: From Restoration Theatre to YouTube by Pamela Bickley and Jenny Stevens

Book review: <i>Studying Shakespeare Adaptation: From Restoration Theatre to YouTube</i> by Pamela Bickley and Jenny Stevens

Early Modern Spectatorship: Interpreting English Culture 1500–1780. Ed. Ronald Huebert and David McNeil.

<i>Early Modern Spectatorship: Interpreting English Culture 1500–1780</i>. Ed. Ronald Huebert and David McNeil.

Professional Actors as Royal Drama Coaches, 1674–81

Abstract This article explores the history of several anecdotes relating to the theatrical coaching and training of members of the royal family, particularly Princess Anne, the future queen, by professional actors during the last decade of Charles II's reign. These anecdotes are not found in any contemporary archival or printed sources; rather, they were first published in the 1740s in a variety of memoirs and encyclopedic compendia relating to the history of the Restoration stage. The article compares and evaluates these anecdotes, investigating their veracity and seeking to uncover their pre-publication sources in the writings of a number of eighteenth-century antiquarians who annotated their personal copies of earlier printed accounts of the Restoration theatre and monarchy.

Designing an Internet-based Database of Restoration Stage Directions: Two Works-In-Progress

Abstract This article discusses the need for electronic research tools in writing theatre history, especially when considering aspects of physical staging. In the course of comparing and contrasting two databases dedicated to Restoration theatre currently under construction, namely the author's database of Restoration Stage Directions and that of the University of Seville's Restoration Comedy Project, it outlines how a correctly designed database can act not only as a convenient example generator, but can also suggest new lines of research

Studying Shakespeare Adaptation: From Restoration Theatre to YouTube, Pamela Bickley and Jenny Stevens (2020)

Review of: Studying Shakespeare Adaptation: From Restoration Theatre to YouTube, Pamela Bickley and Jenny Stevens (2020) The Arden Shakespeare, London and New York: Bloomsbury, 264 pp., ISBN 978-1-35006-864-3, h/bk, £65.00, p/bk, £19.99

Restoration theatre, indirect translation and the canon: Settle's Guarini

Restoration theatre, indirect translation and the canon: Settle's Guarini

Revisiting Restoration theatre through transnational interactions

Revisiting Restoration theatre through transnational interactions

"marvellous and surprizing conduct": The "Masque of Devils" and Dramatic Genre in Thomas Shadwell's The Tempest

"marvellous and surprizing conduct":The "Masque of Devils" and Dramatic Genre in Thomas Shadwell's The Tempest Claude Fretz The epilogue to one of the most successful plays of the Restoration period, Thomas Shadwell's 1674 adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest (1611), entitled The Tempest, or The Enchanted Island, speaks of poets' ghosts that haunt actors in "Visions bloudier th[a]n King Richard's was" (Epilogue, 9).1 The epilogue suggests that the famous dream scene from Shakespeare's Richard III (c.1593), in which the king is haunted by visions of the ghosts of those he has murdered, would have been recognizable already to the first generation of theatergoers after the bard's own.2 This says something important about the attractiveness of staged dreams and visions at that time, not least because Shadwell's Enchanted Island is itself full of strange visions, including the "Masque of Devils" in 2.4, set to music by Pelham Humfrey and Pietro Reggio, in which Prospero's spirits appear onstage as devils and terrify Alonso, Antonio, and Gonzalo. Even though it took the Restoration theatre companies some time to turn to The Tempest—John Dryden and William Davenant did not revise it until 1667—Shakespeare's play is exceptionally well suited to the popular semi-operatic performance style of this period, featuring masque-like entertainment, singing, magic, and a tragicomic plot.3 I use the word "tragicomic" here mainly for want of a more appropriate critical term, because there continues to be disagreement amongst scholars over how to categorise The Tempest—as well as Pericles (1607), The Winter's Tale (1609), and Cymbeline (1610), with which it is usually grouped together. The terms "romance," "tragicomedy," "late play," and "last works" are routinely floated, but none of them are universally accepted.4 [End Page 3] A similar question of genre arises with regard to Restoration drama, despite its neo-classical undercurrents: plays like William Davenant's The Law Against Lovers (1662)—a hybrid of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure (1603) and Much Ado About Nothing (1598)—Thomas Killigrew's Pandora (1664), and John Dryden's Secret Love, or The Maiden Queen (1667) combine romantic and tragic or heroic plots.5 Most germane to the phenomenon of genre hybridization, however, are the period's so-called dramatick operas. These are a group of plays produced between 1673 and the turn of the century, including Shadwell's Enchanted Island, Henry Purcell's Fairy-Queen (1692)—an adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595)—and Charles Gildon's Measure for Measure, or, Beauty the Best Advocate (1700). Unlike the continental operas that were entirely sung, the English dramatick operas integrated dialogue spoken by actors and interspersed with songs. Especially through their aurally and visually spectacular offering, these plays challenge dramatic precepts of verisimilitude, unity, and genre, prompting Judith Milhous to differentiate them from the Restoration's "ordinary comedies and tragedies."6 Whereas most scholarly work on Restoration Shakespeare has focused on textual changes, on the plays' political contexts, or on their musical settings, this article uses the example of the "Masque of Devils" in the 1674 Enchanted Island to show how Shadwell and his collaborators hybridized dramatic genre through spectacle. Furthermore, it argues that the integration of semi-operatic spectacle and generic innovation in the "Masque of Devils" was not purely a Restoration invention, but something that Dryden, Davenant, and Shadwell—with their aesthetic nous and political awareness—developed from Shakespeare's original Tempest.7 Rather than being a Restoration addition to the play, Shadwell's "Masque of Devils"—like Dryden and Davenant's shorter equivalent masque in the 1667 version (published in 1670)—is in fact a subtle iteration of a moment in 3.3 of Shakespeare's play, where Ariel appears as a harpy, accompanied by thunder and lightning.8 Intriguingly, 3.3 marks one of the most generically indeterminate episodes in The Tempest, because even though it belongs to a play that the 1623 folio identifies as a comedy, it relies heavily on devices derived from tragedy.9 The present article sets out to explore how Shadwell and his collaborators used a combination of spectacle and textual as well...

Twice Have the Trumpets Sounded

Probably no single aspect of the semiotics of performance is more critical than the conventionalized signals that inform the audience that they are entering or leaving the liminal world of performance, and that the signs they will receive between these two signals are to be interpreted not necessarily as they would be in everyday life, but according to the codes of the performance situation. A clear example of one familiar modern sign for the ending of the performance is, of course, the curtain call. Throughout the history of theatre, the ending of the performance has most commonly been signaled by visual means – the curtain call, the bringing up of the house lights, the lowering of the house curtain, the general dance of the performers. When we consider the various means by which the beginning of a performance is indicated, however, we find that a significant number of them are in fact not visual but sonic – the first, second and third music in Restoration theatre, the trumpet fanfares at Stratford (Ontario) the “trois coups” of the traditional French theatre, the traditional playing of “God Save the Queen” in British theatres, and Ellen Stewart’s ringing of the hand bell for years at La Mama. In certain cases, the semiotics of sound have been prioritized over those of sight for the sake of summoning audiences, but most often they are already assembled and so other dynamics are at work. This essay will consider some of the most important uses of sound in this particular semiotic function, that is, as a signal for the audience to experience various theatrical works with a performance-oriented consciousness.

Dignity Overpowers Conspiracy of Race Politics and Mercantilism in Thomas Southerne’s Oronooko

John Dryden describes Thomas Southerne as “pure” in reference to the purity of his language, and Alexander Pope delineates Southerne in his “Epistle to Augustus” as an “elderly dramatist skilled in expressing ‘the passions’” and cites him along with Johnson, Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Wycherley, and Rowe as great English playwrights” (qtd. in Kaufman 10). However, not many critics are that generous to Southerne, the only playwright courageous enough to bring a black face on to the English theater in 1695, except Shakespeare who did it with Othello in 1603. The best position critics rank Southerne, author of ten plays, is as the sixth best playwright in English Restoration Theatre. Probably, because of the parasite formula that was in vogue in the 17th century when Southerne wrote Oronooko and which he profoundly capitalized on to write his most famous play, he is not particularly regarded as one of the ingenious playwrights of his era. At best, many critics regard Southerne’s talent as falling short of the mercurial abilities of Dryden, Etheridge, Wycherley, Congreve, and Otway. Some critics, however, are of the view that although Southerne was not fashionably original, his creativity in his ability to refashion and reconfigure the original works he preyed on to make them refreshing and entertaining, should render him as one of the best during the apogee moments of the Restoration era. In this piece, I argue that the antimony of racial politics and the salience of mercantilism in Southerne’s Oronooko dignify women and minorities, even as it simultaneously agitated and mollified the nerves of dealers and supporters of the slave trade.&#x0D;

‘We have this day, expell’d our Men the Stage’: Dating the Prologue and Epilogue of &lt;i&gt;The Parson’s Wedding&lt;/i&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Scholars of Restoration theatre have given contradictory accounts as to which all-female production of Thomas Killigrew’s &lt;em&gt;The Parson’s Wedding&lt;/em&gt; the existing prologue and epilogue belong to. This note argues that out of the two productions in the Restoration period – the first of which took place in October 1664 and the second in June 1672 – the surviving prologue and epilogue were most likely written for the second production. Combining evidence gathered from historical records as well as from textual analysis, this note is the first study to comprehensively investigate this conundrum. &lt;/p&gt;

The Horror Plays of the English Restoration

Anne Hermanson. The Horror Plays of the English Restoration. Surrey: Ashgate, 2014. 186 pp. $109.95 USD, £60 (hardback). ISBN 9781472415523.In order to explain the emergence of the genre of horror tragedy on the English stage during the 1670s, Anne Hermanson analyzes the cultural climate of social dislocation during this period. Hermanson begins by asking why these plays were written at this particular time, and why did they enthrall audiences during the period from 1670 to 1680, only to die away? In this timetable Hermanson is perhaps a little too selective; Thomas Porters The Villain was first performed in 1662 and was drawing audiences, due to Samuel Sandfords lurid performances, well into the eighteenth century, while a play such as Mrs. Pix's Ibrahim of 1696, a product of the 1690s horror revival, is astonishingly violent. However, undoubtedly the majority of plays in which villainy and gruesome violence are on display were written in the 1670s and early 1680s. For Hermanson, the reason for this is rooted in the traumatized collective psyche of the English people following the death of their king, Charles I, and the subsequent civil war. The turmoil, unrest, and instability of the period informed its drama, and many playwrights were writing from their own personal experience of violence and the ideological conflicts of the time. In this book, Hermanson successfully weaves together the influences of politics on the plays, but also (and often in surprising ways) the influences of theatre history, sociology, psychology, gender, religious ideology, philosophy, and scientific discovery.The methodology that Hermanson employs is built upon the foundation of seminal studies such as Derek Hughes' English Drama 1660-1700 and Susan Owen's Restoration Theatre and Crisis, which examine the complex interaction between drama and sociopolitical strife. Like Hughes and Owen, Hermanson grounds her textual interpretations of the dramas within a meticulous analysis of Restoration political history; however, her work does not attempt a comprehensive study of the major and minor plays of the period, rather, it discusses representative and selective plays. In all, the author paints a vivid, imaginative picture of Restoration culture that offers the first comprehensive study of macabre and gruesome dramas, and their appeal to authors and audiences alike.The opening chapter, "Horror and Spectacle," begins with a brief over- view of the political history of England leading up to the civil war, continuing through the Interregnum, the Restoration of the king, the Popish Plot, and the Exclusion Crisis. Hermanson contextualizes the horror tragedies of the 1670s by comparing and contrasting them in a broad, sweeping manner to heroic drama, court masques, and Roman and Jacobean drama, providing examples from the Roman tragedies written by Seneca, as well as the Restoration dramas of Nathanial Lee, Aphra Behn, Thomas Shadwell, John Dryden, and Elkanah Settle, among others. At the start of her examination, she follows R.D. Hume in locating the evolution of spectacle within the context of rivalries between the King's Company and the Duke's Company. The audience's desire for spectacularly elaborate, violent portrayals progressively increased throughout the 1670s, placing the dramas alongside the public obsession with public execution during the period of the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis. Interestingly, however, Hermanson argues that the function of violence in the horror plays of the period was not to teach or instruct the audience. They are not, she claims, "morality plays," and at the end of the performances,there is little if any moral closure or edification... [the villains] die without remorse. The playwrights give a voice-often in the form of a "dying speech"-to those who are least likely to merit it; and the legacy of their words outlasts them... [they] regularly chose to amplify the voices of the guilty and silence the voices of the innocent. …

Restoration Plays and Players: An Introduction

David Roberts. Restoration Plays and Players: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. 260 pp. $27.99 USD, £17.99 (paperback). ISBN 9781107617971.David Roberts' Restoration Plays and Players: An Introduction is a delightful read. It is highly informative and disarmingly accessible in equal measure. Each of the nine chapters seamlessly interweaves the two traditionally opposing approaches to Restoration drama: theatre history and literary criticism. Not only does Roberts' engaging style help to disentangle complex political and ethical issues that surround the plays, but the large and wide-ranging number of allusions to contemporary entertainment (e.g., Roberts compares the comedian James Nokes to Rowan Atkinson) render the theatrical practices during the Restoration more tangible and immediate. This way of juxtaposing the past with the present, no doubt honed by decades of teaching Restoration theatre from Osaka to Oxford, is not simply a device to make the subject matter seemingly more relevant. This approach crucially goes hand in hand with Roberts' larger objective of encouraging scholarship beyond the confines of the established canon by seeing how, through revivals and adaptations, Restoration drama has influenced the modern stage. Restoration Plays and Players is an exemplary introduction as it represents a happy marriage between a compelling learning experience and scholarly rigor.The first two chapters of the book form what are described as "complementary chapters" on "parallel trajectories for Restoration plays" (viii). Specifically, the first chapter opens with an in-depth analysis of what is often considered the epitome of Restoration drama, William Congreve's The Way of the World (1700), as a way of guiding the reader through the intricate political and cultural concerns that influenced the period's drama. The chapter then borrows Robert D. Hume's five-part division of late seventeenth-century dramatic history and shows how the major plays of the period, each of which is discussed in the book, fit into each category. The list, albeit brief, nevertheless comprises what Roberts aptly describes as "Regime change theatre" (1). The second chapter consists of a brief survey of the major practical theatrical innovations during the late seventeenth century, followed by an account of the "life cycle of the play" which delineates the process by which Restoration plays were developed, produced, and revived. Although, as Roberts confesses, topics such as "Actors," "Re- hearsals," and "Audiences" are repeated in subsequent chapters, the two initial chapters together constitute the introductory part of the book and clearly set the agenda for what follows. …

Interpreting Sexual Violence, 1660–1800 ed. by Anne Greenfield (review)

Reviewed by: Interpreting Sexual Violence, 1660–1800 ed. by Anne Greenfield Marta Kvande Greenfield, Anne, ed. Interpreting Sexual Violence, 1660–1800. The Body, Gender and Culture: 14. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013. 200 pp. This ambitious collection of essays aims to survey sexual violence in an enormous range of manifestations — both in historical context and in literary and artistic depictions — over the course of the Restoration and the eighteenth century. It establishes not only the persistent recurrence of depictions of rape in literature and art but also the fact that sexual violence functioned as an ideological nexus in the period because it “reflected so many other . . . ideas, values and anxieties” (4). As such, it offers important contributions to the scholarly conversation on the history of rape as well as to the field of Restoration literature. While many of the essays in this collection center on texts published after 1700, several do consider texts and contexts from the period 1660–1700, and those essays will be the main focus of this review. Greenfield’s introduction to the volume sets the stage by sketching out the prevalence of images of rape and sexual violence across the period and discussing the many ways in which the trope was used. She points out that the “astonishing flexibility” (2) of the trope meant that it could be used for political purposes as well as to titillate audiences and to raise issues relating to “gender, the legal system, inheritance, the passions, the body, resistance to authority, the family, [and] social hierarchies” (3). After highlighting the significant differences between the Restoration and eighteenth-century definition of rape, which was quite narrow, and the twenty-first-century understandings of the term, which can be much more inclusive, the introduction then sets out the collection’s particularly useful approach to sexual violence: while maintaining strong historical awareness of how the idea was understood in the period, the collection defines sexual violence broadly and inclusively in order to consider a wide range of actions and victims. Such an approach is an excellent model for how to remain true to the historical context while bringing to bear what’s most useful in modern scholarship. Much of the rest of the collection lives up to this standard. Two of the essays offer [End Page 83] descriptive summaries that point toward more critical work that remains to be done. Julie Gammon’s essay, “Researching Sexual Violence, 1660–1800: A Critical Analysis,” opens the collection by identifying a set of recurring questions that runs through the scholarship of the last twenty years, briefly describing the debate on most of those questions, and considering a few related topics. Gammon concludes by gesturing toward topics that need further study. This essay might serve as a guide to further research by introducing new scholars to a few of the important topics in the field. Similarly, Anne Marie Byrd’s essay, “Violently Erotic: Representing Rape in Restoration Drama,” surveys depictions of rape in three genres of Restoration theatre: comedies of manners, tragicomedies of intrigue, and Restoration tragedies. As she notes, depictions in comedies tend to be more comedic while those in tragedies tend to be more tragic, and all of these depictions place the focus squarely on the body of the actress. Like Gammon’s essay, Byrd’s offers a point of access for scholars who might pursue further the issues raised by these plays. Gammon’s piece is followed by two essays that offer important and useful historical context and understanding for the study of rape. Mary R. Block’s essay, “’For the Repressing of the Most Wicked and Felonious Rapes and Ravishments of Women’: Rape Law in England, 1660–1800,” points out how important it is to study legal treatises from the period because there were so few actual statutes on the books regarding rape and because these statutes did not define what counted as rape. Block shows that these treatises “consistently described rape as a crime of violence against the body of an individual woman and not as a property crime” (26), an especially important point given that the idea of rape as a property crime crops up repeatedly in other genres (and in much modern...

Seeing places: The Tempest and the baroque spectacle of the Restoration theatre

This essay opens with a discussion of the two major Restoration adaptations of The Tempest, the 1667 adaptation by William Davenant and John Dryden and the 1674 adaptation by Thomas Shadwell. Both adaptations are of interest because their stage success was due in part to the new visual aesthetic of painted scenery employed by Davenant after 1660 and later the King's company led by Killigrew. The difficulty that besets the discussion of the new visual aesthetic, however, is the absence of visual records of performance, an absence, I argue, which masks an important cultural development of early modernity: the ability of new media to represent places visually as mimetic copies of places as seen by the eye. Shakespeare's play is especially relevant, even in its adapted versions, because its own sense of place, the unnamed island, is linked to early colonial encounter with the new world, the play's pastoralism combining by way of Thomas More's pun in “utopia” an idealized place (eu-topos) and its absence (ou-topos). I argue that the idealized “absent” place of performance provides one way of thinking about the theatrical representation of place as “not a place”, an idealized artifice that “colonizes” theatrical space by imposing order on it. In the case of baroque theatre, the craft of perspective painting and visual order subordinate a sense of scenic place by transforming theatrical space into the “baseless fabric of a vision”. The evocation of place through aesthetic artifice is thus mediated through representational forms and practices that, thinking through the spatial theory of Henri Lefebvre, are encoded with different kinds of social exchange in the space of the theatre. In contrast to this argument, however, I will argue alternatively that the play enables through the experience of its performance a critique of the subordination of place to colonial discourse, no less through its utopianism. This latter argument turns upon an understanding of the aesthetic as developed by the cultural theorist Theodor Adorno according to which specific kinds of art open up the possibility for a negative dialectical critique of social order.