Empire on the English Stage 1660–1714
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 8/23/2001
EAN 9780521773508, ISBN10: 0521773504
Hardcover, 362 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm
Language: English
Contesting the argument that Restoration and early eighteenth-century drama referred almost exclusively to domestic social and political issues, Empire on the English Stage 1660–1714 shows that the theatre was a crucial location for debates over England's contemporaneous colonial expansion. The book provides a comprehensive account of colonialism, national identity and the representation of race and ethnicity on stage. Joining historical discussions of the development of British imperial ideology, Bridget Orr argues that dramatic texts and production provide a rich and unexamined archive in which the issues attendant on the emergence of the first empire figure largely. Her account not only sheds light on plays by Dryden, Orrery, Behn, Wycherley and Southerne but directs attention to popular but often marginal texts by Settle, Sedley, Dennis and Charles Shadwell. Attention to the imperial themes of these dramatists decisively redraws the map of Restoration and early eighteenth-century drama.
List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
1. New habits on the stage
2. Enlarging the poet's empire
poetics, politics and heroic plays, 1660–1714
3. The great Turks
the Ottomans on stage, 1660–1714
4. The most famous monarchs of the East
5. Spain's grand project of a universal empire
6. Brave new worlds
Utopian plays of the Restoration
7. The customs of the country
colonialism and comedy
8. Romans and Britons
Conclusion
Notes
Works cited
Index.