The 19th century ushered in an unprecedented boom in technology, the unification of European nations, the building of global empires and stabilization of the middle classes. The theatre of the era reflected these significant developments as well as helped to catalyse them. Populist theatre and purposebuilt playhouses flourished in the ever-growing urban and cosmopolitan centres of Europe and in expanding global networks. This volume provides a comprehensive and interdisciplinary overview of the cultural history of theatre from 1800 to 1920. Highly illustrated with 51 images, the ten chapters each take a different theme as their focus: institutional frameworks; social functions; sexuality and gender; the environment of theatre; circulation; interpretations; communities of production; repertoire and genres; technologies of performance; and knowledge transmission.

French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote, 'the general effect of the theatre is to strengthen the national character to augment the national inclinations, and to give a new energy to all the passions'. During the Enlightenment, the advancement of radical ideas along with the emergence of the bourgeois class contributed to a renewed interest in theatre's efficacy, informed by philosophy yet on behalf of politics. While the 18th century saw a growing desire to define the unique and specific features of a nation's drama, and audiences demanded more realistic portrayals of humanity, theatre is also implicated in this age of revolutions. A Cultural History of Theatre in the Age of Enlightenment examines these intersections, informed by the writings of key 18th-century philosophers. Richly illustrated with 45 images, the ten chapters each take a different theme as their focus: institutional frameworks; social functions; sexuality and gender; the environment of theatre; circulation; interpretations; communities of production; repertoire and genres; technologies of performance; and knowledge transmission.

This volume traces a path across the metamorphoses of tragedy and the tragic in Western cultures during the bourgeois age of nations, revolutions, and empires, roughly delimited by the French Revolution and the First World War. Its starting point is the recognition that tragedy did not die with Romanticism, as George Steiner famously argued over half a century ago, but rather mutated and dispersed, converging into a variety of unstable, productive forms both on the stage and off. In turn, the tragic as a concept and mode transformed itself under the pressure of multiple social, historical and political-ideological phenomena. This volume therefore deploys a narrative centred on hybridization extending across media, genres, demographics, faiths both religious and secular, and national boundaries. The essays also tell a story of how tragedy and the tragic offered multiple means of capturing the increasingly fragmented perception of reality and history that emerged in the 19th century. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: forms and media; sites of performance and circulation; communities of production and consumption; philosophy and social theory; religion, ritual and myth; politics of city and nation; society and family, and gender and sexuality.

For both producers and consumers of theatre in the early modern era, art was viewed as a social rather than an individual activity. Emerging in the context of new capitalistic modes of production, the birth of the nation state and the rise of absolute monarchies, theatre also proved a highly mobile medium across geolinguistic boundaries. This volume provides a comprehensive and interdisciplinary overview of the cultural history of theatre from 1400 to 1650, and examines the socioeconomically heterodox nature of theatre and performance during this period. Highly illustrated with 48 images, the ten chapters each take a different theme as their focus: institutional frameworks; social functions; sexuality and gender; the environment of theatre; circulation; interpretations; communities of production; repertoire and genres; technologies of performance; and knowledge transmission.

To call something modern is to assert something fundamental about the social, cultural, economic and technical sophistication of that thing, over and against what has come before. A Cultural History of Theatre in the Modern Age provides an interdisciplinary overview of theatre and performance in their social and material contexts from the late 19th century through the early 2000s, emphasizing key developments and trends that both exemplify and trouble the various meanings of the term 'modern', and the identity of modernist theatre and performance. Highly illustrated with 40 images, the ten chapters each take a different theme as their focus: institutional frameworks; social functions; sexuality and gender; the environment of theatre; circulation; interpretations; communities of production; repertoire and genres; technologies of performance; and knowledge transmission.

Theatre was at the very heart of culture in Graeco-Roman civilizations and its influence permeated across social and class boundaries. The theatrical genres of tragedy, comedy, satyr play, mime and pantomime operate in Antiquity alongside the conception of theatre as both an entertainment for the masses and a vehicle for intellectual, political and artistic expression. Drawing together contributions from scholars in Classics and Theatre Studies, this volume uniquely examines the Greek and Roman cultural spheres in conjunction with one another rather than in isolation. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: institutional frameworks; social functions; sexuality and gender; the environment of theatre; circulation; interpretations; communities of production; repertoire and genres; technologies of performance; and knowledge transmission.

Historically and broadly defined as the period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of the Renaissance, the Middle Ages encompass a millennium of cultural conflicts and developments. A large body of mystery, passion, miracle and morality plays cohabited with song, dance, farces and other public spectacles, frequently sharing ecclesiastical and secular inspiration. A Cultural History of Theatre in the Middle Ages provides a comprehensive and interdisciplinary overview of the cultural history of theatre between 500 and 1500, and imaginatively pieces together the puzzle of medieval theatre by foregrounding the study of performance. Each of the ten chapters of this richly illustrated volume takes a different theme as its focus: institutional frameworks; social functions; sexuality and gender; the environment of theatre; circulation; interpretations; communities of production; repertoire and genres; technologies of performance; and knowledge transmission.

This book examines the appropriation of theatre and theatrical performance by ideologies of humanism, in terms that continue to echo across the related disciplines of literary, drama, theatre, and performance history and studies today. From Aristotle onward, theatre has been regulated by three strains of critical poiesis: the literary, segregating theatre and the practices of the spectacular from the humanizing work attributed to the book and to the internality of reading; the dramatic, approving the address of theatrical performance only to the extent that it instrumentalizes literary value; and the theatrical, assimilating performance to the conjunction of literary and liberal values. These values have been used to figure not only the work of theatre, but also the propriety of the audience as a figure for its socializing work, along a privileged dualism from the aestheticized ensemble—harmonizing actor, character, and spectator to the essentialized drama—to the politicized assembly, theatre understood as an agonistic gathering.

By the late nineteenth century, Canadian women had begun forging careers as professional actresses, appearing not just in Canada, but in the United States, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. They played an integral role in theatrical networks and helped shape transnational middle-class culture. Taking the approach of feminist collective biography, Sweet Canadian Girls Abroad writes the lives of women who, despite their renown during their lifetimes, have been all too easily forgotten. Cecilia Morgan examines these “sweet girls’” childhoods, their experiences of work, touring, and company management, the plays in which they appeared, and the celebrity they enjoyed. In so doing she shows how women helped convey messages about race, empire, and white identity in popular culture. Investigating a period from the 1870s to the 1940s, Morgan demonstrates how actresses evolved within a period of change in theatre, how they coped with new challenges, and how they brought their craft to new media. Paying particular attention to the careers of Margaret Bannerman, Tony Award-winner Beatrice Lillie, Margaret Anglin, Julia Arthur, and Frances Doble, among many others, this book explores how being an actress abroad became work as well as profession for Canadian women. Extensively researched and generously illustrated, Sweet Canadian Girls Abroad argues for the importance of theatre, both to Canadian women’s history and to our understanding of Canada in a transnational world.

This book is part of an ongoing transnational turn in cultural history. Studies on the history of urban popular culture and the entertainment industries increasingly engage with the European or global circulation of genres, actors, and shows, especially during the period of massive growth and expansion of the sector from the 1870s to the 1930s. Nevertheless, a large part of this research remains focused on exchanges between Western and Central European, and North American metropolises. To provide a fuller picture of the emergence and cross-border transfer of different genres of popular culture, this volume investigates Northern, East Central, and Southern European cities and their relations with each other and the West. The authors analyze the mediating agents, transnational networks, and local responses to new forms of entertainment from Madrid to Vyborg, and from Istanbul to Reykjavík. These examples re-focus the history of urban popular culture in Europe in view of multidirectional transfers and a wider range of regional experiences. Urban Popular Culture and Entertainment will appeal to researchers and students alike interested in the history of popular culture in modern societies, particularly those studying urban centers in Europe, and their transnational and transregional connections.