Writing the History of the British Stage

1660–1900

Richard Schoch

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781107166929
• eBook ISBN: 9781316731314
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

This is the first book on British theatre historiography. It traces the practice of theatre history from its origins in the Restoration to its emergence as an academic discipline in the early twentieth century. In this compelling revisionist study, Richard Schoch reclaims the deep history of British theatre history, valorizing the usually overlooked scholarship undertaken by antiquarians, booksellers, bibliographers, journalists and theatrical insiders, none of whom considered themselves to be professional historians. Drawing together deep archival research, close readings of historical texts from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and an awareness of contemporary debates about disciplinary practice, Schoch overturns received interpretations of British theatre historiography and shows that the practice - and the diverse practitioners - of theatre history were far more complicated and far more sophisticated than we had realised. His book is a landmark contribution to how theatre historians today can understand their own history.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Prelude: On Early Modern Historiography and the Inconceivability of Theatre History
• Chapter 1 Restoration Booksellers as Theatre Historians
• Chapter 2 Trivial Discourses and Persons Not Worth Remembering
• Chapter 3 Gerard Langbaine and His Progeny
• Chapter 4 John Downes and What the Prompter Saw
• Chapter 5 The Biography of Biographia Dramatica
• Interlude: On the Rise of Narrative Historiography
• Chapter 6 The Design of Theatrum Anglicanum
• Chapter 7 Histories of My Own Time
• Chapter 8 Edmond Malone and the Search for Theatrical Intelligence
• Chapter 9 The Anxieties of John Payne Collier
• Postlude: On the Art and Science of Nineteenth-Century Historiography
• Bibliography
• Index