The Theatres of Eighteenth-Century Weather

Spectacle and Climatological Reckoning in English Drama

Denys Van Renen

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN:
  9783031712425
• eBook ISBN:
  9783031712432
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism in Drama

While British drama of the long eighteenth century remains largely unexamined as registering ecological fears, its visual spectacle and settings allow the audience to grasp threats to environments across the globe. In plays from 1682-1799, The Theatres of Eighteenth-Century Weather: Spectacle and Climatological Reckoning in English Drama examines how the "little world" of the theatre enables the British to conceptualize and experience how scientific and technological innovations, industrialization, imperial enterprises, and the increasing scale and reach of the British military affect the climate. In fact, the book attributes the drama of Aphra Behn, Susanna Centlivre, Joseph Addison, Nahum Tate, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and other playwrights as pivotal to maintaining an audience's discernment of climatological processes and variability.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. “The Rareness of the Figures”: Air and Accessibility in Aphra Behn’s Lucky Chance and Emperor of the Moon
• 3. “Storming at Heav’n and Thee!”: Ecological Wastelands from Addison to Johnson
• 4. “What Harm Can There Be in a Little Fresh Air, Sir?”: Reintroducing Circulation to Early-Eighteenth-Century Drama
• 5. “Made Up of Storms and Tempests!”: Colman’s and Sheridan’s Natural Theatre
• 6. “A Winter Drama”: Decolonizing South America and Environmental Restoration in Sheridan’s Pizzaro
• 7. Epilogue: “Lucretius Englisht”: Nahum Tate’s Ecophobic Adaptation of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus
• Back Matter