Performing Restoration Shakespeare

The first book on Restoration Shakespeare in performance, drawing on theatre history, musicology and literary criticism.

Amanda Eubanks Winkler (Edited by), Claude Fretz (Edited by), Richard Schoch (Edited by)

9781009241205, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 January 2023

292 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.8 cm, 0.5 kg

'This unique combination of scholarship with practical theatrical and musical experience will be enjoyable reading for anyone interested in how theatre is made, and useful as well for anyone devising research projects that attempt to combine the expertise of scholars and theatre practitioners. Instead of treating the Davenant Macbeth and the Dryden-Davenant Tempest as travesties of Shakespeare, the contributors provide historical and critical contexts for both texts and music, consider how they can be performed for a modern audience, and describe (often amusingly) the workshops, rehearsals and performance that reveal the complexity of the process of 'recreation'.' Lois Potter, University of Delaware

Performing Restoration Shakespeare embraces the performative and musical qualities of Restoration Shakespeare (1660–1714), drawing on the expertise of theatre historians, musicologists, literary critics, and - importantly - theatre and music practitioners. The volume advances methodological debates in theatre studies and musicology by advocating an alternative to performance practices aimed at reviving 'original' styles or conventions, adopting a dialectical process that situates past performances within their historical and aesthetic contexts, and then using that understanding to transform them into new performances for new audiences. By deploying these methodologies, the volume invites scholars from different disciplines to understand Restoration Shakespeare on its own terms, discarding inhibiting preconceptions that Restoration Shakespeare debased Shakespeare's precursor texts. It also equips scholars and practitioners in theatre and music with new - and much needed - methods for studying and reviving past performances of any kind, not just Shakespearean ones.

Introduction: new Shakespeare for a new era Amanda Eubanks Winkler, Claude Fretz, and Richard Schoch
Part I. Documents of Performance: 1. From boards to books: the circulation of Shakespearean songs in manuscript and print during the interregnum Sarah Ledwidge
2. Heroic Shakespeare at Lincoln's Inn fields Stephen Watkins
3. More than a song and dance? Identifying Matthew Locke's incidental music for Macbeth Silas Wollston
Part II. Performance History and Performance Now: 4. Cross-Dressing in restoration Shakespeare: Twelfth night and the tempest Fiona Ritchie
5. Performing restoration Shakespeare in the eighteenth century James Harriman-Smith
6. An actor's perspective on restoration Shakespeare Louis Butelli
7. Staging restoration Shakespeare with restoration music Robert Eisenstein
Part III. Practice-Based Research: 8. Davenant's lady Macduff and the subversion of normative femininity in twenty-first-century performance Sara Reimers
9. Facts as ideas: the theatricalization of scholarship Kate Eastwood Norris
10. Syncopated time: taging the restoration tempest Amanda Eubanks Winkler and Richard Schoch.

Subject Areas: Educational: English literature [YQE], Shakespeare studies & criticism [DSGS], Theatre studies [AN]