This first comprehensive compilation of twentieth-century scholar­ship in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century drama provides a basis for future research and is an invaluable reference work. Items are arranged alphabetically under general headings--e.g., acting, criticism, periodicals, music, theology--as well as alphabetically by surname of actor, actress, dramatist, musician, etc. Copiously indexed.

Ranging in approach from feminist to historicist, the eleven essays in this collection share the culturalist premise that the drama of late Stuart and early Georgian England helped to constitute the dominant ideology of the period. The contributors' varied approaches allow for the reconsideration of libertinism, the politics of sexual desire, and other classic issues, as well as such newer concerns as the social construction of the first English actresses, empiricism as an emergent epistemological discourse, cultural anxiety about novelty and repetition, and shifting tropes of inherent worth. By reading well-known works in unexpected ways and focusing on less frequently studied dramatists, from Sedley, Motteux, Pix, and Behn to Manley, Trotter, and Shadwell, the contributors also test the limits of the canon. In addition, they suggest that earlier critical perceptions, perhaps even more than the “innate worth” of the plays, determined the shape of the canon. These essays present a different image of Restoration and eighteenth-century theater, one that reveals how the drama was a site as important for the negotiation of cultural meaning as were novels and verse satires.

This annotated bibliography constitutes a thoroughly revised and more easily readable study of Behn's publications, of those edited or translated by her, of publications that included her works, and of writings ascribed to her, along with an annotated bibliography of over 1600 works about her from 1671 to 2001, with an unannotated update covering 2002. The augmented primary bibliography describes all known editions and issues of her works to 1702, and adds a catalogue of editions to 2002, including on-line sources. The secondary bibliography adds close to 1000 items published since 1984 to the original 600 of the first edition along with about 175 more from 1671 to 1984, with attention to materials not in English. New appendices include a list of dedicatees, actors, recent productions (with reviews), and provenances. This volume will be invaluable for book dealers, collectors and librarians, as well as students and scholars of Aphra Behn and of Restoration literature.

The Routledge Anthology of British Women Playwrights, 1777-1843 brings together ten eclectic plays by female dramatists and writers, to stimulate a rich discussion of women, writing, and theatre history. Ranging through tragedy, comedy, musical theatre and mixed-genre texts, this volume celebrates the breadth and experimental spirit of women's eighteenth- and nineteenth-century dramatic writing. Each play is accompanied by an introductory essay that addresses its sociopolitical and theatrical contexts, and outlines its performance and reception history. The selections included here invite teachers and their students to study particular works by authors of note, but also to consider the differences between works written for page and stage. While many of the plays are recognizable as published dramas, they have been placed alongside textual artifacts that suggest plays or theatrical events of which no definitive record exists, as well as supplementary materials that invite teachers to engage their students in exploring women's dramatic writing in this era. Organized in chronological order, The Routledge Anthology of British Women Playwrights, 1777-1843 traces a history of women's writing across genres and styles, offering an invaluable resource to students and teachers alike.

Often perceived as merely formulaic or historical documents, dramatic prologues and epilogues – players’ comic, poetic bids for the audience’s good opinion – became essential parts of Restoration theater, appearing in over 90 percent of performed and printed plays between 1660 and 1714. Their popularity coincided with the rise of the English actress, and Prologues and Epilogues of Restoration Theater unites these elements in the first book-length study on the subject. It finds that these paratexts provided the first sanctioned space for actresses in Britain to voice ideas in public, communicate directly with other women, and perform comedy – arguably the most powerful type of speech, and one that enabled interrogation of misogynist social practices. This book provides a taxonomy of prologues and epilogues with a corresponding appendix, and demonstrates through case studies of Anne Bracegirdle and Anne Oldfield how the study of prologues and epilogues enriches Restoration theater scholarship. Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

If the Renaissance was the Golden Age of English comedy, the Restoration was the Silver. These comedies are full of tricksters attempting to gain estates, the emblem and the reality of power in late feudal England. The tricksters appear in a number of guises, such as heroines landing their men, younger brothers seeking estates, or Cavaliers threatened with dispossession. The hybrid nature of these plays has long posed problems for critics, and few studies have attempted to deal with their diversity in a comprehensive way. Now one of the leading scholars of Restoration drama offers a cultural history of the period's comedy that puts the plays in perspective and reveals the ideological function they performed in England during the latter half of the seventeenth century. To explain this function, J. Douglas Canfield groups the plays into three categories: social comedy, which underwrites Stuart ideology; subversive comedy, which undercuts it; and comical satire, which challenges it as fundamentally immoral or amoral. Through play-by-play analysis, he demonstrates how most of the comedies support the ideology of the Stuart monarchs and the aristocracy, upholding what they regarded as their natural right to rule because of an innate superiority over all other classes. A significant minority of comedies, however, reveal cracks in class solidarity, portray witty heroines who inhabit the margins of society, or give voice to folk tricksters who embody a democratic force nearly capable of overwhelming class hierarchy. A smaller yet but still significant minority end in no resolution, no restoration, but, at their most radical, playfully portray Stuart ideology as empty rhetoric. Tricksters and Estates is a truly comprehensive work, offering serious critical readings of many plays that have never before received close attention and fresh insights into more familiar works. By juxtaposing the comedies of such lesser-known playwrights as Orrery, Lacy, and Rawlins with those of more familiar figures like Behn, Wycherley, and Dryden, the author invites a greater appreciation than has previously been possible of the meaning and function of Restoration comedy. This intelligent and wide-ranging study promises is a standard work in its field.

This essay collection examines one of the most fearsome, fascinating, and hotly-discussed topics of the long eighteenth century: masculinity compromised. During this timespan, there was hardly a literary or artistic genre that did not feature unmanning regularly and prominently: from harrowing tales of castrations in medical treatises, to emasculated husbands in stage comedies, to sympathetic and powerful eunuchs in prose fiction, to glorious operatic performances by castrati in Italy, to humorous depictions in caricature and satirical paintings, to fearsome descriptions of Eastern eunuchs in travel narratives, to foolish and impotent old men who became a mainstay in drama. Not only does this unprecedented study of unmanning (in all of its varied forms) illustrate the sheer prevalence of a trope that featured prominently across literary and artistic genres, but it also demonstrates the ways diminished masculinity reflected some of the most strongly-held anxieties, interests, and values of eighteenth-century Britons.