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)

9781009241199, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 26 June 2025

244 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm, 0.362 kg

'London's playhouses closed in 1642, with the start of the English Civil War, and did not reopen until Charles II returned to England in 1660. … Performing Restoration Shakespeare is the record of a recent collaboration between artists and scholars that sets out to recover a more nuanced picture of this one-off moment in English theatrical history and to argue for its continuing appeal to audiences today.' Times Literary Supplement

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]