Victorian Spectacular Theatre 1850-1910

Victorian Spectacular Theatre 1850-1910 PDF Author: Michael R. Booth
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317389468
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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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 Spectacular Theatre 1850-1910

Victorian Spectacular Theatre 1850-1910 PDF Author: Michael R. Booth
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317389468
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Get Book Here

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.

The Orient on the Victorian Stage

The Orient on the Victorian Stage PDF Author: Edward Ziter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521818292
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
This book explores the impact of the Middle East and the Orient on writing and performance in nineteenth-century British theatre.

The Politics of the Pantomime

The Politics of the Pantomime PDF Author: Jill Alexandra Sullivan
Publisher: Univ of Hertfordshire Press
ISBN: 9781902806891
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Focuses on the variety and independence of pantomime in the provinces, especially Nottingham, Birmingham, and Manchester. Explores official and local censorship and the relationships between local theaters, managers, authors and audiences.

Sensation Drama, 1860-1880

Sensation Drama, 1860-1880 PDF Author: Hofer-Robinson Joanna Hofer-Robinson
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 147443956X
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
Features previously unpublished material alongside famous plays This pioneering edition provides access to some of the most popular plays of the nineteenth century. Characterised by exhilarating plots, large-scale special effects and often transgressive characterisation, these dramas are still exciting for modern readers. This anthology lays the foundation for further scholarly work on sensation drama and focuses public attention on to this influential and immensely popular genre. It features five plays from writers including Dion Boucicault and Mary Elizabeth Braddon. These are supported by a substantial critical apparatus, which adds further value to the anthology by providing rich details on performance history and textual variants. The critical introduction situates the genre in its cultural context and argues for the significance of sensation drama to shifting theatrical cultures and practices.Key FeaturesProvides detailed critical apparatus to facilitate the study of neglected plays, including performance history, notes and recommended further readingWidens the critical conversation on sensation drama by drawing attention to the work of female playwrightsReprints obscure works by popular authors and shows their involvement with both literary and theatrical cultures

Just One of the Boys

Just One of the Boys PDF Author: Gillian M Rodger
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252050169
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
Female-to-male crossdressing became all the rage in the variety shows of nineteenth-century America and began as the domain of mature actresses who desired to extend their careers. These women engaged in the kinds of raucous comedy acts usually reserved for men. Over time, as younger women entered the specialty, the comedy became less pointed and more centered on the celebration of male leisure and fashion. Gillian M. Rodger uses the development of male impersonation from the early nineteenth century to the early twentieth century to illuminate the history of the variety show. Exploding notions of high- and lowbrow entertainment, Rodger looks at how both performers and forms consistently expanded upward toward respectable—and richer—audiences. At the same time, she illuminates a lost theatrical world where women made fun of middle-class restrictions even as they bumped up against rules imposed in part by audiences. Onstage, the actresses' changing performance styles reflected gender construction in the working class and shifts in class affiliation by parts of the audiences. Rodger observes how restrictive standards of femininity increasingly bound male impersonators as new gender constructions allowed women greater access to public space while tolerating less independent behavior from them.

Literature, Technology, and Modernity, 1860-2000

Literature, Technology, and Modernity, 1860-2000 PDF Author: Nicholas Daly
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521833929
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
Industrial modernity takes it as self-evident that there is a difference between people and machines, but the corollary of this has been a recurring fantasy about the erasure of that difference. The central scenario in this fantasy is the crash, sometimes literal, sometimes metaphorical. Nicholas Daly considers the way human/machine encounters have been imagined from the 1860s on, arguing that such scenes dramatize the modernization of subjectivity. This book will be of interest to scholars of moderinism, literature and film.

The Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama

The Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama PDF Author: Carolyn Williams
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108606113
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
This newly commissioned series of essays by leading scholars is the first volume to offer both an overview of the field and also current emerging critical views on the history, form, and influence of English melodrama. Authoritative voices provide an introduction to melodrama's early formal features such as tableaux and music, and trace the development of the genre in the nineteenth century through the texts and performances of its various sub-genres, the theatres within which the plays were performed, and the audiences who watched them. The historical contexts of melodrama are considered through essays on topics including contemporary politics, class, gender, race, and empire. And the extensive influences of melodrama are demonstrated through a wide-ranging assessment of its ongoing and sometimes unexpected expressions - in psychoanalysis, in other art forms (the novel, film, television, musical theatre), and in popular culture generally - from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century.

The Nineteenth Century

The Nineteenth Century PDF Author: Colin Matthew
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191512109
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
The complete Short Oxford History of The British Isles (series editor: Professor Paul Langford) will cover the history of the British Isles from the Roman Era to the present in eleven volumes. In each, experts write to their strengths tackling the key issues including society, economy, religion, politics, and culture head-on in chapters that will be at once wide-ranging surveys and searching analyses. Each book is specifically designed with the non-specialist reader in mind; but the authority of the contributors and the vigour of the interpretations will make them necessary and challenging reading for fellow academics across a range of disciplines. The nineteenth century was Britain's moment as a world power, not only in the narrow political sense, but with respect to a vast range of activities and achievements. This book sets out to describe the force and complexity of that experience, and to cover, in an interdisciplinary way, the political, economic, and cultural history of the British Isles between 1815 and 1901. It looks at the Victorian economy, that transforming great engine of change, as well as Victorian public life as a cultural and political narrative by including chapters on women and domesticity, the remarkable interplay of religion, intellect and science, art, architecture and the city, as well as literature, and the theatre and music of the time. This collection of works by eminent historians brilliantly depicts the nations of the British Isles at the height of Britain's world power.

The Nineteenth Century: The British Isles 1815-1901

The Nineteenth Century: The British Isles 1815-1901 PDF Author:
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0198731442
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
The complete Short Oxford History of The British Isles (series editor: Professor Paul Langford) will cover the history of the British Isles from the Roman Era to the present in eleven volumes. In each, experts write to their strengths tackling the key issues including society, economy, religion, politics, and culture head-on in chapters that will be at once wide-ranging surveys and searching analyses. Each book is specifically designed with the non-specialist reader in mind; but the authority of the contributors and the vigour of the interpretations will make them necessary and challenging reading for fellow academics across a range of disciplines. The nineteenth century was Britain's moment as a world power, not only in the narrow political sense, but with respect to a vast range of activities and achievements. This book sets out to describe the force and complexity of that experience, and to cover, in an interdisciplinary way, the political, economic, and cultural history of the British Isles between 1815 and 1901. It looks at the Victorian economy, that transforming great engine of change, as well as Victorian public life as a cultural and political narrative by including chapters on women and domesticity, the remarkable interplay of religion, intellect and science, art, architecture and the city, as well as literature, and the theatre and music of the time. This collection of works by eminent historians brilliantly depicts the nations of the British Isles at the height of Britain's world power.

British Avant-Garde Theatre

British Avant-Garde Theatre PDF Author: C. Warden
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137020695
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
This book explores an under-researched body of work from the early decades of the twentieth century, connecting plays, performances and practitioners together in dynamic dialogues. Moving across national, generational and social borders, the book reads experiments in Britain during this period alongside theatrical innovations overseas.