English Civil War and Restoration

• The English Civil War occurred from 1642 to 1649 between Puritan Parliamentarians and Royalists.
• The war concluded with the execution of Charles I in 1649.
• The Commonwealth Period spanned from 1649 to 1660.
• Oliver Cromwell, a Puritan, led the Commonwealth Period.
• Cromwell's death in 1658 led to political instability.
• Charles II was invited back from France to become king.

The Interregnum (1642-1660)

• This period represents a suspension of normal government.
• The Restoration refers to the monarchy's return under Charles II.
• Theatre was banned for 18 years to prevent "public disorder".
• The return of Charles II marked the return of theatre.

Reopening of Theatres

• Charles II granted royal patents to William Davenant and Thomas Killigrew in 1662 to establish two theatres.
• Killigrew founded the King’s Company, featuring established actors.
• Davenant established the Duke’s Company, fostering young talent.
• Davenant’s company was more financially successful, leading to a merger after Killigrew's death.
• Only Drury Lane and Covent Garden Theatres were permitted to stage spoken dramas.
• William Davenant lived from 1606 to 1668.
• Thomas Killigrew lived from 1612 to 1683.

Key Restoration Playwrights:

• George Farquhar (1678-1707), known for The Recruiting Officer.
• William Congreve (1670-1729), known for The Way of the World.
• John Dryden (1631-1700), known for All For Love.
• William Wycherley (1641-1716), known for The Country Wife.
• Susanna Centlivre (1669-1723), known for The Busy Body.
• Aphra Behn (1640-1689), known for The Rover.

Genres of Restoration Writing

• Neoclassical Plays: often adaptations of Shakespeare with happy endings; John Dryden wrote these.
• Comedy of Manners: influenced by Moliere; focuses on the upper class with innuendo.
• Comedy of Intrigues: Exploits featured adventure and romance, such as in Aphra Behn’s The Rover.

Characteristics of Restoration Comedy:

• Characters were from the upper classes.
• Preoccupation with fashion and trendy activities.
• Interested in seduction and romantic couples.
• Cynical about marriage
• Puns, wordy jokes, and sparkling dialogue.
• Use of dirty jokes and sexual content.
• High character virtue equated to unsentimental self-knowledge

Most Famous Actor

• Thomas Betterton (1635-1710) began his career at the Duke’s Company under Davenant.
• Betterton was known for his portrayals of Shakespearean tragic heroes.
• He epitomized the oratorical style of acting.
• Betterton became the manager of the United Company.
• He is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Actresses

• Actresses commonly took Breeches Roles.
• Nell Gwynn (1650-1687) was a famous actress.
• Moll Davis (1648-1708) was a famous actress.
• Elizabeth Barry (1658-1713) was a famous actress.

Theatrical Design

• Sebastiano Serlio (1475-1554) was a Renaissance Italian artist and architect
• Serlio combined Vitruvius’ images with perspective drawing and this was new for Italy
• Serlio's Architettura (1545) depicted ideal settings for tragic, comic, and pastoral scenes.
• Giacomo Torelli (1608-1678) was known as "the Italian Magician" and "The Great Sorcerer”.
• Torelli invented the pole and chariot method of set change.
• The Cesky Krumlov opera house in the Czech Republic is the oldest surviving baroque theatre in the world.
• Bibiena designs used single and multi-point perspective,
• Philip James de Loutherbourg (1740-1812) was a famous English scenic designer.
• Loutherbourg worked with David Garrick at the Drury Lane Theatre.
• Loutherbourg introduced "local color" into set design.
• Loutherbourg innovated lighting using gauze and silk screens.
• Loutherbourg was famous for the Eidophusikon.

The "Long 18th Century" (1685-1815)

• This era encompassed the Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, American and French Revolutions, Napoleonic Wars, and the establishment of colonial empires.

The Enlightenment

• John Locke (1632-1704): Believed the mind is furnished with ideas by experience alone.
• David Hume (1711-1776): Argued belief should align with evidence.
• Immanuel Kant (1724-1804): Stated knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds to understanding, and ends with reason.
• Denis Diderot (1713-1784): Identified observation, reflection, and experimentation as ways to gain knowledge.
• The Enlightenment saw rise to scientific method, rationalism and empiricism.
• There was also a focus on the "tabula rasa" conception of man.

18th Century Acting Style – Pre-Garrick

• Acting was based on rhetoric and oratory.
• Roman rhetorician Quintilian (35-100 AD) articulated rules for persuasive oratory in Institutio Oratoria.
• There were specific rules for gestures, such as how to move the hands.
• By the time of Betterton (1635-1710), gestural acting was predominant.
• The style was called ”bombastic”, “declamatory” or ”rhetorical”.
• Actors addressed lines to the audience, not other characters.
• Gestures were memorized and practiced.
• James Quin (1693-1766) also excelled at this method.

David Garrick (1717-1779)

• Often described as the earliest director because he oversaw all elements of production
• He became the patent holder of Drury Lane in 1747.
• Garrick increased rehearsal time to weeks.
• He banished audience members seated on the stage.
• David hired Loutherbourg as set designer.
• David was known for a more natural style of acting than the bombastic style.
• The first actor to be buried in Westminster Abbey.
• He excelled at Shakespeare.

Influence of the Enlightenment

• Reframed acting as a scientific and mechanical process rather than a rhetorical one.
• “I shall first give an ample and clear Definition of ACTING, and make the Natural, Metaphysical, and Consequential Deductions, that will immediately elicite the Right from the Wrong, and shew my Designs are merely Scientifical , and not Sub|servient to Pique and partial Prejudice".
• "THE only Way to arrive at great Excellency in Characters of Humour, is to be very conversant with Human Nature, that is the noblest and best Study, by this Way you will more accurately discover the Workings of Spirit (or what other Physical Terms you please to call it) upon the different Modifications of Matter".
• "Would the Painter produce a perfect Piece to the World, let him Copy from the Life, let Nature herself sit to the Artist: Wou'd a Player perform equally excellent in his Profession, let him be introduc'd into the World, be conver|sant with Humours of every Kind, digest 'em in his Mind, let 'em be cherish'd by the genial Warmth of his Conception, trans|planted into the fair Garden of his Judg|ment, there let 'em ripen to Perfection, and become his own.”
• Diderot’s Paradox of the Actor (1773): Argues that the best actors do not feel emotions they are playing on stage.
• The actual art of acting is the illusion of feeling
• Actors who depend on feeling give uneven performances, and a great actor is guided by intelligence.
• Once the great actor has studied and conceptualized his part through intelligence, he will be able to give repeat performances successfully, irrespective of their personal life.
• “I myself saw what I am going to tell you. Garrick stuck his head out of a door, and, within four or five seconds his face changed from delirious joy to moderate cheerfulness, from this cheerfulness to serenity, from serenity to surprise, from surprise to astonishment, from astonishment to sadness, from sadness to dejection, from dejection to fear, from fear to horror, from horror to despondency, and from this last emotion back up the ladder to the first.”
• Psychologist Silvan Thompkins proved that there are 6 universal affects.
• Emotions are "hard-wired, preprogrammed, genetically transmitted mechanisms that exist in each of us".

England: Backlash Against Restoration Comedy

• 1691: Society for the Reformation of Manners was established to suppress profanity, immorality, and prostitution in England.
• 1698: Jeremy Collier wrote “A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage,” decrying the lewdness of Restoration theatre.
• 1737 Licensing Act made Patents given to Davenant and Killigrew illegal.
• Parliament passed the Licensing Act to maintain government control of theatres.
• The Office of the Examiner of Plays was set up.

Impact of the Industrial Revolution (1750-1830)

• A rising middle class wanted plays about bourgeois characters with middle-class values who were rewarded
• Also contributed to the rise in sentimentalism as a counterbalance to the dehumanization, urbanization, and mechanized labor the accompanied factories

Backlash Against Enlightenment Rationalism

• Reaction against rationalism led to sentimentalism.
• Precursor to the Romantic movement in the 19th century.

Sentimentalist Theatre of the 18th Century

• Bourgeois Tragedy: elevated middle and lower class characters to tragedy.
• Bourgeois tragedy aimed at modeling good morality, rewarding the good and punishing the evil.
• The London Merchant (1713) by George Lillo is an example. Sentimental Comedy: grew out of Restoration drama focusing on middle class characters.
• Sentimental comedy rewarded good and punished evil.
• Had no verse, which made it more realistic.
• Had happy endings that usually made people cry.
• The Conscious Lovers by Richard Steele (1722) is an example, with the goal to create “a pleasure too exquisite for laughter”.

Laughing Comedies

• She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith in 1773 is a "laughing comedy" that parodies sentimental comedy while still affirming middle class values.
• Plot: Mr. Hardcastle plans to marry his daughter Kate to Sir Charles Marlow’s son. Mrs. Hardcastle wants her son Tony Lumpkin to marry Constance Neville. Marlow and Hastings are tricked into believing Mr. Hardcastle’s home is an inn, and Kate wins Marlow’s heart. Through deceptions, Tony releases himself and Constance unites with Hastings.

Rise of German Theatre: Sturm & Drang

• German theatre didn’t develop until after the 30 Years War (1618-1648).
• German rulers imported theatre troupes from Italy and France to give neoclassical performances at that point.
• Shakespeare was translated to German for the first time in the 1760s, which shattered neoclassical norms.
• German playwrights started writing big, dramatic, tragic plays, many of which were unstageable
• Themes of plays were anti-rationalism, pro- emotion and pro individualism
• Important precursor to Romanticism.
• Johannes Goethe (1749-1832) is best known for his play Faust.
• Fredrich Schiller (1759-1805) is best known for his plays Mary Stuart & Die Rauber.
• Die Rauber was published in 1781 and was the first play written by Friedrich Schiller. The story is about two aristocratic brothers, Karl and Franz Moor, and the younger Franz plots to take his older sibling's inheritance.
• The play included controversial scenes like double suicide and a nun being raped
• The audience fainted

First Play in North America

• It took place in 1606 in Canada.
• The Theatre of Neptune was performed in the harbor of Port Royal.
• Actors playing members of the Micmacs proclaimed their loyalty to the King of France and Neptune shows up and they have a banquet
• The first documented play in the US had court records as evidence because actors put on theatre.
• Actors were accused of “public wickedness” for putting on theatre.
• Performed in a Virginia tavern in 1665

Colonial Era to the Revolutionary War

• Three major colonial cities each had a relationship to theatre (Philadelphia, PA, Boston, MA, and New York, NY).
• Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn in 1682.
• He was Quaker and focused on accessing the Holy Spirit directly.
• Rejected doctrine of predestination and believed in direct divine revelation
• Theatre banned in the colony because play-going is an offense against God that incites people to Rudeness, Cruelty, Looseness, and Irreligion
• By the 1720s, Philadelphia became a bigger, more cosmopolitan city, making it more religiously diverse
• In 1756 Anglicans allowed theatre in Philadelphia.
• Quakers banded together with Presbyterians, Baptists, and Lutherans to protest it, but theatre won out eventually
• Massachusetts was founded by the Puritans, and they hated theatre.
• However, the growth of the merchant class created a demand for theatre.
• Merchants wanted to recreate the culture of “polite society” in England, and theatre is a part of that.
• The Puritan government pushed back and banned theatre in 1750.
• As the merchant class gradually became upset about taxation without representation leading up to the Revolutionary War, they boycotted theatre as a “British” import

New York, NY

• NYC was established as a trading post by the Dutch West Indies Company in 1624.
• Strictly a commercial outpost with little to no religious oriented colonialism.
• Rip van Dam, governor of New York in the 1730s, loved and sponsored theatre.
• Popular play performed in NYC in 1732 is George Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer.
• In 1750 the Murrary Keane and the Hallam company in 1754 visited

First Theatre Companies in US

• Murray and Keane company, aka “The Virginia Company of Plays” was active from 1749-152, when they were overshadowed by the Hallam Company.
• Performed in Williamsburg, Virginia
• Hallam Theatre Company
• It was kicked out of England for breaking the 1737 Licensing Act.
• The troop sailed to Virginia in 1752
• It was comprised of 12 adults and 3 children
• They performed The Merchant of Venice
• For the next 3 years in New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston and then toured in Jamaica.
• In 1756, Lewis Hallam died.
• His widow remarried David Douglass, and they merged theatre companies forming The American Company, and returned to the US
• In 1774, the Continental Congress banned theatre, and the company resettled in Jamaica until 1785 when they could return to the US.

Revolutionary War Era (1775-1783)

• 1775: The Continental Congress banned theatre in America, “We discountenance and discourage all species of extravagance and dissipation, including horse-racing, cock-fighting, all kinds of gaming, exhibition of shows, plays, and other expensive diversions and entertainments.
• The ban ended in 1783 when the peace treaty was signed with England and theatre came back
• William Dunlap (1766-1839) wrote Andre (1798)
• This play was a Historical Tragedy and was the first American tragedy on an American subject.
• He also writes the first history of American theatre, published in 1832
• Is the 1st professional American dramatist

A Brief History of the Caribbean

• Christopher Columbus landed in the West Indies (aka the Bahamas) in 1492, which initiated Spanish colonization
• The British began colonizing in the 1630s and then captured Jamaica from the Spanish in 1655.
• France and the Netherlands also began colonizing at this time.

Triangle Trade

• 90% of Indigenous people (Caribs and Taino’s) died of disease within 50 years of Columbus’ arrival
• Slaves imported from Africa began producing sugar, molasses and rum