English Rehearsal Plays: Theatre, Politics, and "Theatrical Politics", 1660-1800

Abstract

This dissertation contributes to Restoration and eighteenth-century studies by advancing the first critical examination of rehearsal plays as a distinct subgenre of dramatic comedy. I examine the development of the genre alongside major changes to production practices and acting techniques during this period to argue that rehearsal plays’ burlesque subversions of contemporary drama and dramatic conventions satirically enact problematic political and theatrical successions from the Exclusion Crisis of the 1680s to the representation of Shakespearean tragedies in the 1780s. More than simply plays about other plays, rehearsal plays superimpose critical spectators whose dialectical engagements with the embedded burlesque expose a shift in the relationship between actors, authors, and audiences as the London patent theatres emerge from civic institutions of courtly pastime into civil enterprises of commercial entertainment. This dissertation has two aims. First, I chart adaptations of "The Rehearsal" by George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham through the eighteenth century to show how this satire on Restoration courtiers and court drama is continually readapted into an oppositional satire on contemporary politicians and mock-heroic burlesque of contemporary tragedians. Second, I examine the changing dramatic structure of several eighteenth-century rehearsal plays to show how the genre flourishes in response to a rapid expansion of the theatrical marketplace during this period. Drawing upon a vast archive of playbills, performance reviews, and theatrical ephemera, this study examines some of the most celebrated Restoration and eighteenth-century rehearsal plays, and offers theatre historians an expanded understanding of some major playwrights and performers including Henry Fielding, Catherine Clive, David Garrick, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan.