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William Congreve, The Way of the World. It premiered shortly after his thirtieth birthday, but was received hostilely by many theatregoers, who objected to the immoral nature of the play showing how much attitudes had changed in the quarter-century since The Country Wife premiered.
All of the classic ingredients of the Restoration comedy are here: the clash between marriage for love and marriage for money, devious trickery, sexual politics. Mary Pix, The Beau Defeated. In this lesser-known Restoration comedy, also from , two women are on the hunt for good husbands. As with many classic Restoration comedies, underhand trickery and deceit loom large in this poem where everyone seems to be wearing some sort of mask, if only metaphorically, while social climbing is the name of the game.
Susannah Centlivre, The Basset Table. The original production ran for just four nights, but Centlivre is now regarded as the second woman of the English stage, after Behn.
George Farquhar, The Recruiting Officer. This play from is a later example of the Restoration comedy produced, somewhat confusingly, some time after the Restoration era had ended — but then a good label tends to hang around , and concludes our pick of the greatest Restoration plays.
I love Restoration. Such elegance of language. Davenant had been a playwright and a producer of plays and masque s before the Civil war and had been granted permission to stage some events during the Commonwealth. The theatre was the first in England to have a proscenium arch and moveable scenery and was in use for performance until Davenant adapted several Shakespeare plays and was the author of the first English opera, The Siege of Rhodes , which he staged as a revival in his theatre in Killigrew had also practised as a playwright prior to the execution of Charles I and in he founded Drury Lane Theatre, which is still regarded as one of the finest in England.
Killigrew has been credited with introducing female actors, music and scenery to the stage. He also mounted some of the most significant productions of the period, including revivals of plays by Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher. Killigrew also staged works by contemporary playwrights such as John Dryden and William Wycherley and is regarded as one of the cleverest stage craftsmen of the restoration. Like Davenant, he was keen to experiment with technical innovation.
Betterton was an actor-manager and the most famous leading man of his day. One of the most significant innovations in Restoration theatre was the introduction of actresses on the English stage. Barry was a successful comedienne who created a variety of Restoration comedy heroines throughout her career, but her greatest impact on Restoration drama was as a tragic actress. As a child, Bracegirdle was placed in the care of the actor Thomas Betterton, who became her guardian and with whom she studied acting.
Her first appearance on stage may have been when she was only six years old. As her career developed, she became a leading lady and a favourite of William Congreve, playing the heroine in many of his comedies. Bracegirdle was also a skilled tragic actress, an accomplished singer and enjoyed a reputation for virtue that was quite unusual for actresses of the time.
Susanna Mountfort was an extremely versatile and popular with audiences in comic parts especially for her breeches roles. She married twice. Her first husband, William Mountfort, was murdered in , after which she married the actor John Verbruggen. He was a friend of the notorious Earl of Rochester, whose debauched lifestyle was a model for the Restoration rake. Etheridge was the playwright who set the tone for the great Restoration comedies that followed.
It is a full-blown Restoration comedy and particularly notable for the fop pish character, Sir Fopling Flutter. Wycherley trained as a lawyer, but decided to become an actor-manager and writer. This after he began to associate with Etheredge and the Earl of Rochester, who was used as a model for a number of debauched characters in Restoration plays.
In he was made Poet Laureate and he used his poetry and articles to make strong political points. He also wrote part of an operatic libretto as well as translating and adapting many classical texts.
Behn was the first professional woman dramatist. As well as plays, Behn also wrote poetry and novels and is said to have undertaken assignments as a spy. She is best known for her topical satirical comedies which display an even handed approach to gender issues.
Behn wrote eighteen plays, most of them highly successful and each as indecent as any by Wycherley or Vanbrugh. Vanbrugh had several careers; first as a professional soldier, then as a playwright and probably most famously as an architect and surveyor. Vanbrugh's most successful plays were The Relapse: or Virtue in Danger a comedy about a libertine and his long-suffering wife, and The Provoked Wife Both plays were savagely attacked in a critical pamphlet see below written by the puritan clergyman Jeremy Collier in Celebrated as the greatest writer of Restoration comedies of manners, Congreve was regarded as the master of stage comedy, writing plays that often dealt with marriage and extra marital affairs, perhaps written from his own experiences.
Congreve had affairs with the Duchess of Marlborough, who bore him a child, and also with the actress Anne Bracegirdle, one of his leading ladies. In the Restoration, the playwright be employed by the company on a fixed salary. The writers received the receipts of the third performances or sixth or nine and each additional third night of the initial run of a play. After the initial run, the play belonged to the company and the author does not receive any further payment.
The playwright also could not copyright his works. However, at the end of his reign, the subsequent monarchs did not feel the same way. With the rise of the merchant class, theatre became a commercial activity, attracting a new breed of audience. The nuances of wit and theme so characteristic of the Restoration period were soon replaced with a less intellectually challenging repertoire. The audience wanted spectacle, since its enjoyment needs no prerequisite of intellect or wit.
Earlier plays of Shakespeare and Marlowe in particular, were adapted during this period, many of them with music. What is significant is that the rewriting and adaptation altered the original to suit contemporary tastes and political needs. In a self-conscious age, both audiences and dramatists were concerned about what was put up and viewed. Hence, people have a heightened attention to taste, manners and socially acceptable plots and themes in much of the Restoration drama.
The Eighteenth Century stage afforded the best opportunities for lavish costumes. The budget for costumes changed in accordance with the management. Because the Restoration stage enjoyed the patronage and esteem of King Charles II, both Davenant and Killigrew received ample funds for wardrobe. The theatrical tastes of the eighteenth century audience tended towards spectacle, and costumes were designed to please the masses.
Because theatre during this time was a visual experience before anything else, it was important for successful theatre, both of the court and public theatre, to parade the actors in the most elaborate costumes possible. Usually the playwright was the director of a play, and he held rehearsals from 11 a. New plays, however, were usually staffed by the writers, while old plays were rehearsed by the stage manager, who was normally an actor of the company employed also for additional duties.
The actors or actresses learned regarding with the blocking or position in the stage as well as the clarity of their speeches. Rehearsals for plays normally extended from seven to twelve days. During the time of the Restoration, the period between dramas was very critical. Much of the Elizabethan Play writers blended tragedy and comedy, whereas the Restoration dramatists chose to separate the two.
The drama of this period can be broken into two categories, comedies and tragedies. Restoration tragedy is classified as heroic tragedy. Heroic tragedy is very extraordinary and usually encompasses some extremely good deed done by a very willful, admirable character. The heroic plays were written in rhymed couplets, usually concerned the necessity of choosing between love and honor and abounded in violent action and starling reversals Brockett, Accordingly, Aristotle says that the tragic hero will mostly effectively evoke both pity and terror if he is neither thoroughly good nor thoroughly bad but a mixture of both, and also the tragic effect will be stronger if the hero is higher than ordinary moral worth Abrams and Harpham, Usually these tragedies are reworking of Shakespearean plays.
Comedy is a fictional work in which the materials are selected and managed primarily in order to interest and amuse us: the character and their discomfitures engage our pleasure attention rather than our profound concern, we are made to feel confident that no great disaster will occur, and usually the action turns out happily for the main character. Restoration comedy is, of course, the best known form of drama from this age. The features of Restoration comedy described as follows according to Nayar , :.
The most common and popular type of Restoration comedy is the comedy of manner. It is a kind of play in which characters and events are subordinated to the revelation or critic of social values and customs. These plays would typically mock the upper-class and would usually include vulgar and sexually suggestive language. The London-based plays invariably portrayed humanity in terms of stereotypes: the boorish country man, the witty gentleman, the hypocritical Puritan, the cuckolded or easily tempted husband and so on.
The comedies invited the audience to participate in the exposure of social hypocrisy.
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