Victorian Theatricals

Victorian Theatricals PDF Author: Sara Hudston
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408148382
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
A captivating study of the plays, literature and writings about private and public theatrical spectacle during the Victorian Age By the 1890s the British theatre had transformed itself into a world where spectacles and public shows were aimed at the widest audience possible. The theatre had become big business. This anthology brings together a variety of plays and prose which sets this phenomenon in perspective and traces the development of Victorian theatricals from private home events in the late-Georgian period to full-scale Gilbert and Sullivan operettas in the 1890s. The section 'Theatrical Behaviour' looks at the world of the audience and includes extracts from Jane Austen's novel Mansfield Park; Thackeray's Vanity Fair; an anonymous playlet called Acting Proverbs; and an extract from Marie Corelli's novel Sorrows of Satan. In 'Fun and Freaks' we explore the world of popular, sensationalist entertainment through the eyes of Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Dion Boucicault and others. In the final section, 'Society', we have the scripts for four principal melodramas and serious plays of the age: The Factory Lad by John Walker; Society by T.W. Robertson; The Mikado by W.S. Gilbert and The Second Mrs Tanqueray by Arthur Wing Pinero.

Victorian Theatricals

Victorian Theatricals PDF Author: Sara Hudston
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408148382
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 448

Get Book Here

Book Description
A captivating study of the plays, literature and writings about private and public theatrical spectacle during the Victorian Age By the 1890s the British theatre had transformed itself into a world where spectacles and public shows were aimed at the widest audience possible. The theatre had become big business. This anthology brings together a variety of plays and prose which sets this phenomenon in perspective and traces the development of Victorian theatricals from private home events in the late-Georgian period to full-scale Gilbert and Sullivan operettas in the 1890s. The section 'Theatrical Behaviour' looks at the world of the audience and includes extracts from Jane Austen's novel Mansfield Park; Thackeray's Vanity Fair; an anonymous playlet called Acting Proverbs; and an extract from Marie Corelli's novel Sorrows of Satan. In 'Fun and Freaks' we explore the world of popular, sensationalist entertainment through the eyes of Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Dion Boucicault and others. In the final section, 'Society', we have the scripts for four principal melodramas and serious plays of the age: The Factory Lad by John Walker; Society by T.W. Robertson; The Mikado by W.S. Gilbert and The Second Mrs Tanqueray by Arthur Wing Pinero.

Theatre in the Victorian Age

Theatre in the Victorian Age PDF Author: Michael R. Booth
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521348379
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
A comprehensive survey of the theatre practice and dramatic literature of the Victorian period.

The Victorian Marionette Theatre

The Victorian Marionette Theatre PDF Author: John Mccormick
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1587295180
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
In this fascinating and colorful book, researcher and performer John McCormick focuses on the marionette world of Victorian Britain between its heyday after 1860 and its waning years from 1895 to 1914. Situating the rich and diverse puppet theatre in the context of entertainment culture, he explores both the aesthetics of these dancing dolls and their sociocultural significance in their life and time. The history of marionette performances is interwoven with live-actor performances and with the entire gamut of annual fairs, portable and permanent theatres, music halls, magic lantern shows, waxworks, panoramas, and sideshows. McCormick has drawn upon advertisements in the Era, an entertainment paper, between the 1860s and World War I, and articles in the World’s Fair, a paper for showpeople, in the first fifty years of the twentieth century, as well as interviews with descendants of the marionette showpeople and close examinations of many of the surviving puppets. McCormick begins his study with an exploration of the Victorian marionette theatre in the context of other theatrical events of the day, with proprietors and puppeteers, and with the venues where they performed. He further examines the marionette’s position as an actor not quite human but imitating humans closely enough to be considered empathetic; the ways that physical attributes were created with wood, paint, and cloth; and the dramas and melodramas that the dolls performed. A discussion of the trick figures and specialized acts that each company possessed, as well as an exploration of the theatre’s staging, lighting, and costuming, follows in later chapters. McCormick concludes with a description of the last days of marionette theatre in the wake of changing audience expectations and the increasing popularity of moving pictures. This highly enjoyable and readable study, often illuminated by intriguing anecdotes such as that of the Armenian photographer who fell in love with and abducted the Holden company’s Cinderella marionette in 1881, will appeal to everyone fascinated by the magic of nineteenth-century theatre, many of whom will discover how much the marionette could contribute to that magic.

W.S. Gilbert

W.S. Gilbert PDF Author: Jane W. Stedman
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780198161745
Category : Composers
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911) was the most brilliant dramatist of Victorian England. A daring and cynical playwright, the forerunner of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, he was also a prolific journalist and humorous poet (his Bab Ballads are still widely read), and he achieved worldwide fame through his long collaboration with the composer Arthur Sullivan, a collaboration that created such classics as H. M. S. Pinafore, The Mikado, and all the other Savoy operas. Now the story of this remarkable writer's life - and of his stormy relationship with Sullivan - is here chronicled by a renowned authority on Gilbert and on the theatrical and literary scene in Victorian London. For this biography, Jane W. Stedman has returned to original sources, has interviewed survivors, and has scoured a whole variety of Victorian periodicals for reviews, and personal comment. Gilbert emerges as a much more complex and interesting figure than has previously been thought. The book is a worthy companion piece to Arthur Jacobs's recent biography Arthur Sullivan: A Victorian Musician.

Victorian Spectacular Theatre 1850-1910

Victorian Spectacular Theatre 1850-1910 PDF Author: Michael R. Booth
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131738945X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
Originally published in 1981. This study concentrates on one aspect of Victorian theatre production in the second half of the nineteenth century – the spectacular, which came to dominate certain kinds of production during that period. A remarkably consistent style, it was used for a variety of dramatic forms, although surrounded by critical controversy. The book considers the theories and practice of spectacle production as well as the cultural and artistic movements that created the favourable conditions in which spectacle could dominate such large areas of theatre for so many years. It also discusses the growth of spectacle and the taste of the public for it, examining the influence of painting, archaeology, history, and the trend towards realism in stage production. An explanation of the working of spectacle in Shakespeare, pantomime and melodrama is followed by detailed reconstructions of the spectacle productions of Irving’s Faust and Beerbohm Tree’s King Henry VIII.

Victorian Theatricals

Victorian Theatricals PDF Author: Sara Hudston
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781408164099
Category : English drama
Languages : en
Pages : 431

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Book Description
Sara Hudston collects a range of plays, literature and writings about private and public theatrical spectacles during the Victorian era to show how British theatre had, by the 1890s, reached out to the widest audience possible.

Victorian Women and the Theatre of Trance

Victorian Women and the Theatre of Trance PDF Author: Amy Lehman
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786454717
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
Spiritualists in the nineteenth century spoke of the "Borderland," a shadowy threshold where the living communed with the dead, and where those in the material realm could receive comfort or advice from another world. The skilled performances of mostly female actors and performers made the "Borderland" a theatre, of sorts, in which dramas of revelation and recognition were produced in the forms of seances, trances, and spiritualist lectures. This book examines some of the most fascinating American and British actresses of the Victorian era, whose performances fairly mesmerized their audiences of amused skeptics and ardent believers. It also focuses on the transformative possibilities of the spiritualist theatre, revealing how the performances allowed Victorian women to speak, act, and create outside the boundaries of their restricted social and psychological roles.

Victorians on Broadway

Victorians on Broadway PDF Author: Sharon Aronofsky Weltman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780813944319
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Broadway productions of musicals such as The King and I, Oliver!, Sweeney Todd, and Jekyll and Hyde became huge theatrical hits. Remarkably, all were based on one-hundred-year-old British novels or memoirs. What could possibly explain their enormous success? Victorians on Broadway is a wide-ranging interdisciplinary study of live stage musicals from the mid- to late twentieth century adapted from British literature written between 1837 and 1886. Investigating musical dramatizations of works by Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Christina Rossetti, Robert Louis Stevenson, and others, Sharon Aronofsky Weltman reveals what these musicals teach us about the Victorian books from which they derive and considers their enduring popularity and impact on our modern culture. Providing a front row seat to the hits (as well as the flops), Weltman situates these adaptations within the history of musical theater: the Golden Age of Broadway, the concept musicals of the 1970s and 1980s, and the era of pop mega-musicals, revealing Broadway's debt to melodrama. With an expertise in Victorian literature, Weltman draws on reviews, critical analyses, and interviews with such luminaries as Stephen Sondheim, Polly Pen, Frank Wildhorn, and Rowan Atkinson to understand this popular trend in American theater. Exploring themes of race, religion, gender, and class, Weltman focuses attention on how these theatrical adaptations fit into aesthetic and intellectual movements while demonstrating the complexity of their enduring legacy.

Victorian Theatricals

Victorian Theatricals PDF Author: Ed. Sara Hudston Staff
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780140437126
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Lewis Carroll and the Victorian Stage

Lewis Carroll and the Victorian Stage PDF Author: Richard Foulkes
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351922335
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Author of the enduringly popular Alice books, mathematician, Anglican cleric, and pioneer photographer, Lewis Carroll maintained a lifelong enthusiasm for the theatre. Lewis Carroll and the Victorian Stage is the first book to focus on Carroll's irresistible fascination with all things theatrical, from childhood charades and marionettes to active involvement in the dramatisation of Alice, influential contributions to the debate on child actors, and the friendship of leading players, especially Ellen Terry. As well as being a key to his complex and enigmatic personality, Carroll's interest in the theatre provides a vivid account of a remarkable era on the stage that encompassed Charles Kean's Shakespeare revivals, the comic genius of Frederick Robson, the heyday of pantomime, Gilbert and Sullivan, opera bouffe, the Terry sisters, Henry Irving, and favourite playwrights Tom Taylor, H. A. Jones, and J. M. Barrie. With attention to the complex motives that compelled Carroll to attend stage performances, Foulkes examines the incomparable record of over forty years as a playgoer that Carroll left for posterity.