Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

By 1710, most of the important writers of Restoration drama had either died or stopped writing for the stage. (The most notable exceptions are Centlivre, Cibber, Rowe and Steele.) So had most of the critics who had first written about that drama. In a mere four years, the last Stuart monarch, Queen Anne, died, and the throne was inherited by her Hanoverian cousin, George I, a non-English speaker with little interest in the theatre. The theatres had grown progressively larger in the fifty years since the Restoration, acting styles had changed with a new generation of actors, audiences continued to grow and diversify; it is hardly surprising that the plays, too, changed with the times. It is important to remember that art forms and the critical responses to them are no more static than other social or political institutions, a point too often overlooked by those who wish to make sweeping generalizations about the theatre of the Restoration and eighteenth century. By 1800, Restoration drama was for the most part gone and forgotten. A core of plays was still in print; very few were still performed. How Restoration drama reached this state of neglect, and the gradual renewal of interest that developed in the twentieth century, is the subject of this chapter. The reception history of Restoration drama, like that of any performance art, must be measured with reference both to its place ... log in or subscribe to read full text