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![Acting
Action “Action is motion and motion is the
support of nature
– The audience is fixed by even irregular or fantastic
action and drowsy [even] when the best actor speaks
without action
Speaking
– Musical proportions of words to sentences; syllables
to words and word order
Thomas Betterton](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/12-151203132619-lva1-app6892/75/11-f2015-Restoration-Theater-24-2048.jpg)
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11. f2015 Restoration Theater
- 1. Restoration Theater • Duke'sCompany, Sir William Davenant • King's Company, Thomas Killigrew
- 2. Restoration Theatre • Newstructures and new technology • New or newly revised texts • New approaches to acting • New approaches to/from audiences
- 3. Theater Buildings • Jacobeantheatres, closed since 1642 were in a state of disrepair – Cockpit had been used in 1658 for "private" staging of Davenant’s "musical entertainment" or "opera," • Continental style required – Stages with proscenium arches, – Depth to support movable scenery and "flats”
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- 5. Lincoln Inn Fields toDorset Gardens 1661 Temporary use of Lisle’s Tennis Court 1671 Dorset Gardens Theatre Duke’ Theatre, The Empress of Morocco (1673)
- 6. Lincoln Inn Fields 1671Dorset Gardens Theatre 1695 New company led by Thomas Betterton & William Congreve sets up a new version of the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre Dorset Gardens Theatre, as it was pictured in the libretto of The Empress of Morocco (1673)
- 7. Drury Lane 1663 TheatreRoyal built for King’s Company 1674 Rebuilt after fire by Wren 1682 King’s and Duke’s companies combine at Theatre Royal
- 8. Drury Lane Theatre 1674Wren section 1776 w. Adam modifications
- 10. Genres of Drama •Tragedy • Heroic drama • Restoration Comedy – Farce – Aristocratic comedy (early) • Wit & Comedy of Manners – Fletcher • Humours – Jonson • Restoration spectacular, or machine play
- 11. Restoration Tragedies • Leaveout comic interludes • No discourse between upper class heroes and commoners • Often moral or political purpose 1677 Nathaniel Lee The Rival Queens • Edit Shakespeare to new tastes 1677 Dryden All for Love 1681 Tate History of King Lear
- 12. Dryden All forLove or, the World Well Lost • 1677 Tragedy – Blank verse – Based on Antony and Cleopatra – Classical unities: minimal subplot, one locale, single day • Political subtext – Dedicated to Danby – Urges moderation and accord with King Charles
- 13. 1681 Nahum TateHistory of King Lear ”I found the whole…a Heap of Jewels, unstrung and unpolisht; yet so dazling in their Disorder, that I soon perceiv’d I had seiz'd a Treasure.” The solution was to"rectifie what was wanting in the Regularity and Probability of the Tale,"
- 14. Rectification of Lear •Love between Cordelia and Edgar • No fool • Edmund plots to rape Cordelia • Rescue by the English people • Restored Lear gives the throne to Edgar and Cordelia
- 15. Spectacular and Semi-opera 1667,1674 Dryden and Davenant The Enchanted Island (The Tempest) with music by Matthew Locke and Henry Purcell 1674 Shadwell Psyche 1685 Dryden Albion and Albantus 1692 Dryden The Fairy-Queen, based on Midsummer’s Night Dream
- 16. Other Adaptations 1662 DavenantThe Law Against Lovers Text from Measure for Measure with added characters from Much Ado 1662 Davenant Romeo and Juliet Added dialog between Juliet and dying Romeo 1682 Thomas Durfey The Injured Princess Adaptation of Cymbeline
- 17. Wit • Contemporary setting •Double-entendres • Revelation of hypocrisy • Rakes, jealous husbands, clever servants, abandoned lovers, etc., • Often a secondary plot with conventional lovers “Methinks wit is more necessary than beauty and I think no woman ugly has it and no handsome woman agreeable without it” Horner in The Country Wife
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- 19. Humours • Character types Notpersonal defects “peculiar to all, or most of the same Country, Trade, Profession or Education” “Humour shews us as we are. Habit shews us, as we appear, under a forcible Impression. Affectation shews what we would be, under a voluntary Disguise.” Thomas Benetton
- 20. Off color jokes Belinda:I could never yet agree what Face I should make, when they come blurt out with a nasty thing in a Play : For all the Men presently look upon the Women, that's certain ; so laugh we must not, tho' our Stays burst for’t because that's telling Truth, and owning we understand the Jest. For my part I always take that occasion to blow my Nose. Lady Brute: You must blow your Nose half off then at some Plays. John Vanbrugh The Provok’d Wife, 1709
- 21. Aphra Behn “Astrea” 1670The Forc’d Marriage 1677 The Rover 1688 Oroonoko, tale of an enslaved African prince, a work noted for exploration of slavery, race, and gender Royalist supporter The stage how loosely does Astræa tread Who fairly puts all characters to bed. Pope
- 22. Behn The Feign’dCourtizans The devil take this cursed plotting Age, ‘T has ruin’d all our Plots upon the Stage; Suspicions, New Elections, Jealousies, Fresh Informations, New discoveries, Do so employ the busie fearful Town, Our honest calling here is useless grown; Each fool turns Politician now, and wears A formal face, and talks of State-affairs… Prologue Play dedicated to Nell Gwynn 1679
- 23. Epilogues • Often contrastedthe personality of the dramatic character with the reputation of the performer • Comic, poetic bids for the audience's good opinion • Often given by a leading actress
- 24. Acting Action “Action ismotion and motion is the support of nature – The audience is fixed by even irregular or fantastic action and drowsy [even] when the best actor speaks without action Speaking – Musical proportions of words to sentences; syllables to words and word order Thomas Betterton
- 25. Audience Expectations • Actorstypecast by audience (but not always by director) • Women to play women’s roles (ordered by Charles II • Women’s sexualized roles – Tragic heroine – Couch scenes – Rape scenes – Breeches roles
- 26. Actresses Did not theBoys Act Women’s Parts Last Age? Till we in pitty to the Barren Stage Came to Reform your Eyes that went astray, And taught you Passion the true English Way Have not the Women of the Stage done this? Nay took all shapes, and used most means to Please. How many on's, you naughty Men, you know, Have used you but too well? nay and some few, (But not too much of that) been Constant too. And if to damne us now is our Reward, I say no more; but - Faith 'tis very hard. Epilogue, Elkanah Settle The conquest of China by the Tartars 1676
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- 28. Breeches roles • ElizabethHowe found that out of ~375 plays produced in London between 1660 and 1700, 89, nearly a quarter, contained one or more roles for actresses in male clothes You'l' hear with Patience a dull Scene, to see, In a contented lazy waggery, The Female Mountford bare above the knee. Thomas Southerne's Sir Anthony Love (1690), Epilogue Howe, Elizabeth. The First English Actresses: Women and Drama, 1660-1700. Cambridge University Press, 1992.
- 29. Breeches Roles Tis worthMoney that such Legs appear, These are not to be seen so cheap elsewhere. Actress Elizabeth Boutell Doublet and breeches
- 30. Warrior Actresses And thoughthese Martial Dresses are not common, Well Arm'd, you'l find it hard to Foile a Woman. Think not our Courage, for our Sex less bold; Nor us so Brittle, but our Strength can hold. For Fighting Gallants, when you led the Dance, Some of our Sex went after You to France: And Female Bully into Breeches got, Some say, The Last Sea Fight stood Cannon Shot. Why may not Women have as Generous Ends In Conquering Enemies, as Obliging Friends? Epilogue, Settle Conquest of China
- 31. Acting Actions suit thewords. Words and action suit the person portrayed. Continue to act even when not speaking. Gestures are the common speech of all mankind Gildon, Charles. Life of Mr. Thomas Betterton. Robert Gosling, 1710.
- 32. Leading Actors Thomas Betterton(1635-1710) Solyman in Davenant Siege of Rhodes, 1663 Elizabeth Barry (1656-1713) Congreve Mourning Bride, 1703
- 33. Anne Bracegirdle (1671-1748) • Popularin breeches roles • Reputation for modesty • Along with Betterton and Barry, leader in United Company
- 34. John Lacy (1615-81)in: Sauny the Scot (adaptation of Taming of the Shrew), The Country Chaplain, The Cheats
- 35. Attending the Theatre •Cheap seats 1 s; pit 2s 6d o Cheap meal 2 ½ d; coffee 1d; quart of beer 1d o Wages – carpenter 2s 6d/day But what Rabble was it to provoke? Are the Audience of a PIayhouse (which are generally persons of Honour, Noblemen and Ladies, or at worst, as one of your Authors calls his Gallants, Men of Wit and Pleasure about the Town) are these the Rabble of Mr. Hunt? Dryden when accused of inciting the rabble.
- 36. Arriving Let our gallant(having paid his half- crown, and given the door-keeper his ticket) presently advance himself into the middle of the pit, where having made his honour to the rest of the company, but especially to the vizard-masks, let him pull out his comb, and manage his flaxen wig with all the grace he can. Mask for a doll c. 1690-1700 owned descendants of Pepys
- 37. Arriving Having so done,the next step is to give a hum to the China orange-wench, and give her her own rate for her oranges (for ’tis below a gentleman to stand haggling like a citizen’s wife) and then to present the fairest to the next vizard-mask. Laughing Audience from Hogarth
- 38. Mary Meggs or“Orange Moll” Licensed to sell “oranges, lemons, fruit, sweetmeats and all manners of fruiterer's and confectioner's wares.” Resuscitated a patron who choked on fruit. Convey message from an actress to Pepys Employed Nell Gwyn as orange girl Price of oranges: 6d
- 39. The Audience Hither comethe country gentlemen to show their shapes, and trouble the pit with irrelevances about hawking, hunting, their handsome wives and their housewifery. There sits a beau like a fool in a frame, that dares not stir his head nor move his body for fear of incommoding his wig, ruffling his cravat, or putting his eyes or mouth out of the order his maitre de danse set it in; whilst a bully beau comes drunk into the pit, screaming out, “Damn me, Jack, ’tis a confounded play, let’s to a whore, and spend our time better.” Henry Misson Memoirs, 1698
- 40. Leaving SIR NOVELTY FASHION.Then you must know, my coach and equipage are as well known as myself; and since the conveniency of two playhouses, I have a better opportunity of showing them; for between every act- whisk — I am gone from one to th’other: — Oh! what pleasure ’tis, at a good play, to go out before half an act's done! NARCISSA. Why at a good play? SIR NOVELTY FASHION. Oh madam, it looks particular, and gives the whole audience an opportunity of turning upon me at once: then do they conclude I have some extraordinary business, or a fine woman to go to at least: and then again, it shows my contempt of what the dull town think their chiefest diversion. Colley Cibber Love’s Last Shift, 1696
Editor's Notes
- #5 http://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/london-map-morgan/1682
- #6 Dorset Garden The Dorset Garden Theatre was built by Thomas Betterton, the leading actor of the Duke's Company, in 1671. Betterton had assumed control over the company from Sir William Davenant's widow, and he wanted a new and magnificent building to replace the converted tennis court in Lincoln's Inn Fields that was his companies current home. The resulting building, which received its name by virtue of having been erected upon the former grounds of Dorset House, was magnificently ornate, and had been specifically designed for the staging of expensive and spectacular productions. Its acoustics, however, were not the best, and the new theatre was, despite its magnificence, thought by most to be an inferior venue to the Theatre Royal. For this reason, Dorset Garden was abandoned for the latter when, in 1682, the Duke's and King's companies combined. Dorset Garden was thereafter relegated to the staging of popular entertainments, wrestling contests, and musical competitions. It was finally demolished in 1720. Dorset Garden Theatre, as it was pictured in the libretto of The Empress of Morocco (1673)
- #7 Dorset Garden The Dorset Garden Theatre was built by Thomas Betterton, the leading actor of the Duke's Company, in 1671. Betterton had assumed control over the company from Sir William Davenant's widow, and he wanted a new and magnificent building to replace the converted tennis court in Lincoln's Inn Fields that was his companies current home. The resulting building, which received its name by virtue of having been erected upon the former grounds of Dorset House, was magnificently ornate, and had been specifically designed for the staging of expensive and spectacular productions. Its acoustics, however, were not the best, and the new theatre was, despite its magnificence, thought by most to be an inferior venue to the Theatre Royal. For this reason, Dorset Garden was abandoned for the latter when, in 1682, the Duke's and King's companies combined. Dorset Garden was thereafter relegated to the staging of popular entertainments, wrestling contests, and musical competitions. It was finally demolished in 1720. Dorset Garden Theatre, as it was pictured in the libretto of The Empress of Morocco (1673)
- #8 First opened by Thomas Killigrew for the King's Company, in May of 1663, at a cost of l. 1,500, the Theatre Royal at Drury Land was widened in 1665, but gutted by fire in 1672 (fire being a perennial threat to indoor theatres in this period). A new theatre was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and opened in March 1674, at a cost of l. 4000. When, in 1682, the Duke's and King's Companies responded to shrinking audiences and financial hardship by amalgamating into the United Company, it was the Theatre Royal that they chose as their home
- #10 When the two companies had merged in the 1680s and Dryden had access to Dorset Garden, he wrote one of the most visual and special-effects-ridden machine plays of the entire Restoration period, Albion and Albanius (1684–85): The Cave of PROTEUS rises out of the Sea; it consists of several arches of Rock-work adorned with mother-of-pearl, coral, and abundance of shells of various kinds. Through the arches is seen the Sea, and parts of Dover-pier; in the middle of the Cave is PROTEUS asleep on a rock adorned with shells, &c. like the Cave. ALBION and ACACIA seize on him; and while a symphony is playing, he sinks as they are bringing him forward, and changes himself into a Lion, a Crocodile, a Dragon, and then to his own shape again; he comes forward to the front of the stage, and sings."[9] How were such effects produced, and how did they look? The crocodile etc. obviously used the floor trap, but was it an illusionistically painted figure worked with sticks, or a man in a crocodile suit? There are no extant drawings or descriptions of machinery and sets for the Restoration theatre, although some documentation exists for court masques from the first half of the 17th century, notably the work of Inigo Jones and his pupil John Webb. One reason for the lack of information for the public theatres is that stage effects, and particularly machines, were trade secrets. Inventors of theatrical effects took great pains to hold on to their secrets, and the playhouses guarded their machine workings as zealously as a magician guards her or his tricks.
- #11 Heroic dram Plots are historical or mythical. The plays are famous for verbal rants, frequent appearances by ghosts, and characters who might be mistaken on first encounter for walking inventories of the Cartesian passions. While rich in representations of religious ritual, Christian as well as pagan, they tend to be strongly anti-clerical and often, either situationally or by introducing ‘atheistical’ speeches, anti-Christian.With Puritanism discredited as seditious and hypocritical, Romanism as an agent of secular tyranny and Anglicanism for its reliance on state coercion, art turned to the magnification of human capacities as a way of filling the spiritual void. these remarkable dramaswere also a potent mythical expression of ideological conflict, one that had to remain mythical because the real message – a Hobbesean one in Dryden’s case and a Calvinist one in Lee’s – could not be uttered openly. In Britain the birth-throes of the modern were intensified by uncertaintywhether the path forwardwas to be that of a revived Caesarism on the model of France or that of a consensual oligarchy within which medieval notions of distributed power would be preserved through the parliament and the common law. There was also the third way of an untrammelled individualism, which found its theatrical personification in Dryden’s Almanzor from The Conquest of Granada. Genres of tragedy, heroic drama, romance, wit comedy, humours comedy, and farce the chief effect of women on dramatic literature was to push it in the direction of sex and sensuality.49 There was little attempt to create righteous, high-minded female roles at the beginning of the Restoration period. Actresses really had very little to do with the development of female roles at all – playwrights and theatre-owners largely manipulated the development of female roles. The “sexual realism” of real women portraying onstage females proved popular and immediately erupted into the generation of new types of plays.50 Richard Steele, author of the daily publication The Spectator, commented on the capability of women to improve a dull play: I, who know nothing of women but from seeing plays, can give great guesses at the whole structure of the fair sex, by being innocently placed in the pit, and insulted by the petticoats of their dancers; the advantages of whose pretty persons are a great help to a dull play. When a poet flags in writing lusciously, a pretty girl can move lasciviously, and have the same good consequences for the author.” Richard Steele, quoted in Styan, Restoration Comedy in Performance, 91
- #15 Epilogue If you like nothing you have seen this day The play your judgment damns, not you the play
- #17 Sir William Davenant of the Duke's Company staged a 1662 adaptation in which Henry Harris played Romeo, Thomas Betterton Mercutio, and Betterton's wife Mary Saunderson Juliet: she was probably the first woman to play the role professionally.[98] Another version closely followed Davenant's adaptation and was also regularly performed by the Duke's Company. This was a tragicomedy by James Howard, in which the two lovers survive
- #20 A Humor is the Byas of the Mind, By which with violence ’tis one way inclin'd: It makes our Actions lean on one. side still, And in all Changes that way bends the Will. Shadwell
- #22 The stage how loosely does Astræea tread Who fairly puts all characters to bed. Pope
- #26 There’s a famous story told by Colley Cibber, about an actor called Samuel Sandford, who was renowned for acting villains. Cibber describes a performance he was in the 1690s, when the audience sat patiently through three of four acts, waiting for him to be revealed as a villain. But when it turned out at the end of the play that Sandford was really an honest man, they “Fairly damn’d it, as if the Author had impos’d upon them the most frontless or incredible Absurdity.” Resistance by some male actors to the reduced roles available and the loss of an apprentice system in which boys started out in female roles. Couch Scene female characters were directed to lie at a distance, asleep on a couch, bed or grassy bank where, attractively defencless and probably enticingly déshabillie, their beauty unwittingly aroused
- #27 Plea to not damn the play. Whatever the type of play, the actress’ most important quality was her beauty; many actresses were required to do little more than pose on stage in order to be gazed upon and desired by male characters and spectators.55 There was a very early tendency to exploit the actress, and indeed it was a first consequence of her “visible assets – her shoulders and breasts were a valuable commodity” in an age of full-length dresses. Comedy is also, however, characterized by its attention to the individual actors and actresses – this was the age of performer’s theater, as opposed to that of the dramatist or director.67 One of the indicators of the nature of Restoration comedy was the development of personalized prologues and epilogues, spoken primarily by actresses, creating familiarity between player and spectator.68 These personalized speeches gave actresses a large degree of independence in comedies – their personalities were given a chance to shine for their audience, and in introducing and concluding comedies, actresses had the opportunity to comment on the plays – as such, they ruled the genre
- #29 Howe, Elizabeth. The First English Actresses: Women and Drama, 1660-1700. Cambridge University Press, 1992.
- #33 Betterton the authors of the Biographical Dictionary have said, Betterton is generally recognized as ‘the greatest English actor between Burbage and Garrick’, Speaking of the qualities of the ideal actor, Johnson said, ‘Nature had indeed been very bountiful to Mr. Betterton, and yet Art and Labour had improv'd him wonderfully, and he confessed but lately, He was yet learning to be an Actor.’ Although productions did not change much once set, Betterton was always eager to try new things. as manager Betterton implemented in English theatre the development of spectacle already accomplished in Italy and France. He exploited the potential of the new stage machinery, combined with music and dance as well as words, to offer productions of a kind not seen before by London audiences. The expense of this change of direction proved difficult to absorb in unsubsidized public theatres, but the policy of reinvesting profits in the company served to balance ‘the bad with the good’ nights, Credited with working with playwrights and did not take credit for his own plays which were adaptations. Barry Thomas Betterton said that her acting gave “success to plays that would disgust the most patient reader”, Started poorly in minor roles. John Wilmot, earl of Rochester (1647–1680), and his friends noticed her from their seats in the pit, and he took a wager to make her ‘the finest Player on the Stage’ in under six months. Barry, acknowledged in her time and this to have been the greatest actress of the Restoration, acted in repertory 142 named parts at the height of her career (1673–1708), and there may be more in cast lists that have not survived. Her affairs, real or reputed, with George Etherege, the earl of Dorset, and Sir Henry St John contributed to the establishment of the belief that actresses were usually of loose sexual morality. In the season of 1680–81 she was, according to William Chetwood, the object of ‘a horse-laugh’ from the audience when she spoke the lines of Nahum Tate's Cordelia in his King Lear—‘Arm'd in my Virgin Innocence, I'll fly’ Barry's importance in the late seventeenth century's preference for pathetic and she-tragedies is recognized. Barry also became for her company the leading creator of witty, comic heroines, and in them she had the graceful, easy, genteel style
- #35 Lacy in three of his most celebrated roles: the lead from Sauny the Scot: or The Taming of The Shrew (his own adaptation from Shakespeare performed at the Theatre Royal in 1667); Monsieur Device from The Country Chaplain (by the Duke of Newcastle); and Scruple from The Cheats (by John Wilson). John Lacy was a comic actor and dramatist, and a particular favourite of Charles II. He became a star performer at the Theatre Royal in London. 1668-70 renowned for dialect-based performances. farce in the French style appears to have been the form Lacy most favoured in his own compositions. It has been argued that Lacy's adaptation of Molière influenced that by Henry Fielding in the eighteenth century . Contemporary satires alleged that Lacy had a relationship with the king's mistress Nell Gwyn. Certainly, he gave her acting and dancing lessons. He clearly kept up his dancing skills in later life, adding dances to the entr'actes
- #37 However, on the 1st June, 1704, a song was sung at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, called 'The Misses' Lamentation for want of their Vizard Masques at the Theatre', Doll's mask of cardboard covered with black ribbed silk and lined with vellum, with openings for the eyes and nose. Inside is a mouthpiece of twisted thread bearing a glass bead which allows the mask to be held in place by gripping the bead between the teeth