Restoration Comedy in Performance - Softcover

Styan, J. L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521274214 ISBN 13: 9780521274210

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1986

Synopsis

Restoration comedy disappeared from the stage for nearly 200 years until it was revived early this century. Without the benefit of a performance tradition has suffered from an inappropriate literary and moralistic criticism which continues to this day. Yet this brilliant court and coterie comedy of sexual and social behaviour was an extraordinary success in its own time, and enjoys a unique place in theatrical history as an example of the interplay possible between the stage and the audience. In this book John Styan persuades us that only through a performance approach to the great plays of Etherege, Wycherley, Dryden, Shadwell, Vanbrugh, Congreve and Farquhar can we recover a sense of their value. Restoration Comedy in Performance is liberally illustrated with contemporary drawings and modern photographs, and it draws extensively upon documentary and visual evidence of the seventeenth century in order to suggest the importance of the costume and customs, manners and behaviour of the age to an understanding of the sort of theatre and drama it produced. Professor Styan also discusses the problems encountered in the early attempts to revive the comedies in the twentieth century, and pauses frequently in order to offer a descriptive account of a moment of staging or to recreate a scene or a sequence of comic repartee or action. The book aims to bring back to life, therefore, something of a lost art form, not as a piece of conventional stage or production history, but as a true attempt to recognize the virtues of Restoration comedy as a performing art.

About this title

From Library Journal

Until recently, critics have dismissed Restoration comedy as superficial, predictable, even obscenea degenerate heir to Elizabethan drama, a crude ancestor of the modern "well-made play." Styan finds this criticism based on the assumption that plays should read as literature. He insists that Restoration comedy is above all theater and therefore concentrates on its physical and social aspects: staging, costumes, and manners. By featuring these important elements of Restoration life, Stynan says, dramatists were able to achieve an interplay between drama and reality. Styan illustrates his material with quotes from plays, courtesy books, poetry, etc., making this work a lively, readable introduction to the era as well as the plays. James Stephenson, Gelman Lib., George Washington Univ., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0521274214
• ISBN 13: 9780521274210
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 288