Description
Book SynopsisTheatre in Dublin, 1745–1820: A History, the first comprehensive history of the Dublin theatres in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, reconstructs the milieu of popular public entertainment in the city of Dublin during these seventy-five years. Synthesizing and analyzing all known surviving information about the many Dublin theatres, pleasure gardens, circuses, and concert halls, John C. Greene incorporates details of over 18,000 performances. This book presents detailed illustrations of the theatre buildings based on recent archaeological and architectural discoveries, showing the seating arrangements, capacities, entrances, exits, and dimensions. This information is essential in trying to reach a clearer idea of the composition of the Dublin audience. Using population figures and architectural details, Greene demonstrates that the Dublin theatres could not have been the coterie venues as previously thought, but were, in fact, composed of a majority of Catholic patrons. This answers important questions about the rationale behind the choice of plays and other entertainment. Theatre in Dublin also presents an extensive amount of new information on the government regulation of entertainment, including a close study of the legislative process leading to the Stage Act of 1786. Greene also analyzes business elements such as advertising, benefit performances, finances, theatre management practices, repertory, and the costume and prop details. He takes care to consider the socioeconomic position and mobility of both the entertainers and audience. It also includes detailed chronological surveys of dancers and dancing, costumes, scenery, scenographers, machinists, and specialty performers, such as rope-dancers and equestrians. These two volumes include forty-eight illustrations.
Trade ReviewAn impressive, thorough work of scholarship, this set is exhaustive in its coverage of the Dublin stage from 1745 to 1820. Greene (English, Univ. of Louisiana, Lafayette) presents material relating to the period's physical properties (theaters, music halls, pleasure gardens); descriptions and analyses of the ever-changing entertainment scene; biographies of managers, actors, and performers; discussions of theater repertories, stage practices, and acting styles; summaries of financial concerns; assessments of audience demographics and tastes; and more. Over the past 25 years the author has scoured virtually every archive of significance, and he gathers in these volumes a wealth of data valuable in its own right. From the information gathered, however, he does the additional service of effectively demonstrating that the Irish theater of the period was not merely a distant satellite of the London stage (though connections were natural and even mutually beneficial) or some "West British" offspring of British colonialism. Rather, as Greene convincingly shows, a genuinely Irish influence permeated the stage well before Yeats, Lady Gregory, and the 1897 founding of the Irish Literary Theatre. This two-volume set opens the door for a much-needed reevaluation and reassessment of the period and of Irish studies in general. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above. * CHOICE *
