The Censorship of Eighteenth-Century Theatre

Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-1-108-49625-4
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 280 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 544 g

This collection reveals the wide-ranging impact of the Stage Licensing Act of 1737 on literary and theatrical culture in Georgian Britain. Demonstrating the differing motivations of the state in censoring public performances of plays after the Stage Licensing Act of 1737 and until the Theatres Act 1843, chapters cover a wide variety of theatrical genres across a century and show how the mechanisms of formal censorship operated under the Lord Chamberlain's Examiner of Plays. They also explore the effects of informal censorship, whereby playwrights, audiences and managers internalized the censorship regime. As such, the volume moves beyond a narrow focus on erasures and emendations visible on manuscripts to elucidate censorship's wide-ranging significance across the long eighteenth century. Demonstrating theatre archives' potency as a resource for historical research, this volume is of exceptional value for researchers interested in the evolving complexities of Georgian society, its politics and mores.

Autoren/Hrsg.

O'Shaughnessy, David

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Theaterwissenschaft

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: theatre censorship and Georgian cultural history David O'Shaughnessy; Part I. Gender: 1. Censorship as cultural production: the 1752 public entertainments act and Christopher Smart's Old Woman's Oratory Kristina Straub; 2. Damned women, or the disclosures of censorship Daniel O'Quinn; 3. Women writers and censorship in the early nineteenth century Katherine Newey; Part II. Politics: 4. Theatrical censorship and empire Bridget Orr; 5. Adapting Caleb Williams for the stage: the theatrical pale of censorship in Colman's The Iron Chest Lisa A. Freeman; 6. Knave or not? Censoring Thomas Holcroft Julie A. Carlson; Part III. Performance: 7. The censorship of personal satire on the eighteenth-century stage Matthew J. Kinservik; 8. Censoring the unseen: revolution and the aesthetics of theatrical space David Francis Taylor; 9. Evading censorship through comedy, improvisation and non-verbal performance in the early nineteenth century Jim Davis; 10. Censoring regency flash: the melodrama of the Weare-Thurtell murder case, 1823–24 Gillian Russell.

Über Autor(innen)

O'Shaughnessy, David
David O'Shaughnessy is Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of Galway. He is co-editor of The Letters of Oliver Goldsmith (Cambridge University Press, 2018), a general editor of The Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith (2024-), and Principal Investigator of the European Research Council funded project 'Theatronomics: the business of theatres, 1732–1809'. His website 'The Censorship of British Theatre, 1737–1843' won the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Prize for Digital Resources (2022).