Restoration drama

In the year 1642 a Commonwealth Proclamation ordered the playhouses to be shut down. It was not merely due to any Puritan objections to the theatre as such (as an institution telling lies), but because numerous plays in the preceding years had been openly critical of parliamentary as well as of political repression.

The period 1660-1700 is marked by innovation from its very beginning. The advent of women, both as actresses and as dramatists, had a profound impact on the staging of plays and the response to them. The shape and layout of the theatres changed, together with the style of acting, and the nature of the audience. New themes appeared, partly as a reaction to new social and political conditions and, partly in response to the technical changes. Nevertheless, the theatres continued to operate under varying degrees of censorship. This encouraged the staging of plays expressing loyalty to the monarch and prevailing ethics, and meant that some plays considered politically or socially dangerous were suppressed.

The Theatres

Charles II loved the theatre, and was from the beginning of his reign a patron of it. When he officially re-opened them, he sought to ensure political loyalty by confirming existing monopolies to two trusted courtiers: Sir William Davenant and Sir Thomas Killigrew. And he re-established a system of censorship, or, in the terminology of the Restoration, licensing. The two courtiers formed two companies, the Duke´s and the King´s. In addition to these patent theatres, there were court theatres, including the Cockpit at Whitehall, and the Hall Theatre, built in 1665. They sometimes involved Duke´s and King´s actors, as part of their productions, sometimes they hosted troupes from France and Italy. In 1682 the King´s Company failed and was absorbed into the Duke´s to form the United Company. It continued performances at Dorset Garden and plays at Drury Lane until 1695, when a group of star actors around Thomas Betterton and Elizabeth Barry defected the United Company and formed their own company, playing in the old Lincoln Inns Field playhouse.

The performers, their companies and their audience

The greater names of the theatres like Thomas Betterton, Charles Macklin or Samuel Foote were not only actors, but also wrote plays (although some were merely adaptations of older plays), as well as managing their companies. Richard Steele for example, in addition to contributing and editing various magazines like The Tatler, The Spectator, The Guardian or The Theatre, was a theatre manager and also wrote influential plays, such as The Tender Husband (1705) or The Conscious Lovers (1722). Sir John Vanbrugh designed the Haymarket theatre in addition to writing. Susannah Centlivre started as an actress, before becoming one of the most successful dramatists of her generation. Nell Gwyn retired from the stage after she became Charles II´s mistress, but remained a patron and admirer of the theatre. However, women dramatists, like other women writers, were subject to attack by men, as in the satire The Female Wits (1696).

The most important innovation at the beginning of the Restoration is the introduction of actresses to the stage. Before, women had acted occasionally in court masques (some female members of royalty). But the general rule in England had been for men and boys to act the women´s parts. However, on the continent, actresses had already become the norm, and Charles II during his years of exile had become accustomed to them. In August 1660 he ordered Davenant and Killigrew to place women in all female roles.

The position of actresses was ambiguous. That many actresses were kept by wealthy lovers, or performed individual sexual favours in return for money, is undeniable. It is important to note that male actors also occupied a paradoxical position during much of the period. They were considered to be relatively low down on the social scale.

There was an intimate relationship between actors on stage and the audience, as one can see in the prologues and epilogues and the many asides directly addressed to the audience in the plays, delivered from the projecting apron stage. The theatres were rather small and there was no distance from the stage to the audience. This intimacy led to often lively exchanges between spectators and actors. The audience was far less heterogeneous than it had been in Shakespeare´s time, containing a large number of upper-class men and women. Relatively high prices, ranging from one to four shillings, kept the poorest members of society away.

The dramatists and the plays

The earliest plays performed after the Restoration were revivals of plays from earlier periods including many written shortly before the Civil War and many by Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. Most of the time Renaissance plays were re-written to fit the neo-classical style. Many Restoration dramatists looked to the classics, either directly, or via French theorists and writers. They made use of Aristotle (catharsis/mimesis/unities) as well as of Horace (instruct/entertain). But it is important to note that theory and practice often diverged, and English drama was never as strict in preserving the unities, for example, as was the French.

One famous type of Restoration plays is the Heroic drama, with themes like honor and love which were stylised and exaggerated. These were the sources of conflict, which could not be solved and thus lead to the ultimate catastrophe. The protagonist is hopelessly idealized in his actions and virtues. Some claim that the Restoration Comedy today is more palatable than the tragedy. It is witty, and most of the time rather immoral.

Sources:

Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature. Edit. Marion Wynne-Davies.London 1989.

Englische Literaturgeschichte. Hrsg. Ewald Standop und Edgar Mertner. Heidelberg 1971.