Originally published in 1981. This study concentrates on one aspect of Victorian theatre production in the second half of the nineteenth century the spectacular, which came to dominate certain kinds of production during that period. A remarkably consistent style, it was used for a variety of dramatic forms, although surrounded by critical controversy. The book considers the theories and practice of spectacle production as well as the cultural and artistic movements that created the favourable conditions in which spectacle could dominate such large areas of theatre for so many years. It...
Originally published in 1981. This study concentrates on one aspect of Victorian theatre production in the second half of the nineteenth century th...
Originally published in 1984. The turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was a time of considerable change in the English theatre. Victorian attitudes were shocked or shattered by the new drama of Ibsen; the major figure of George Bernard Shaw dominated the period; theatre censorship was the subject of a long and furious contest; and staging conventions changed from the spectacular stylings of Irving and Beerbohm Tree to the masking and statuesque styles of Isadora Duncan and the inner realism of Stanislavsky.
This book traces the activities of the leading figures in the English...
Originally published in 1984. The turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was a time of considerable change in the English theatre. Victoria...
Originally published in 1971. The Victorian Age was one of popular theatre and increasingly popular journalism. One manifestation of this journalism was the emergence of the dramatic critic from the anonymity and brevity which had previously characterized periodical treatment of the theatre. If Victorian theatre is regarded as existing essentially thirty years before Victoria acceded and continuing until the outbreak of war in 1914, the names of Lamb, Leigh Hunt and Hazlitt at one end, and of Beerbohm and MacCarthy at the other, can be added to a list that includes Lewes, James, Archer,...
Originally published in 1971. The Victorian Age was one of popular theatre and increasingly popular journalism. One manifestation of this journalis...
Originally published in 1978. Henry Irving achieved an astounding success in Britain and America as an actor; yet he lacked good looks, had spindly legs, and did not have a good voice. He said so himself. Today Irving is regarded as the archetype of the old-time actor, but in his own time he was regarded as a great theatrical innovator. Even Bernard Shaw, who attacked him pitilessly, even unto death, called him modern when he first saw him act.
Irving, the man, with his tenacious, obsessive talent, his human limitations and weaknesses, and his ephemeral glory is brought most...
Originally published in 1978. Henry Irving achieved an astounding success in Britain and America as an actor; yet he lacked good looks, had spindly...
