Restoration Drama

 The inauguration of the actress

 

One the first cultural measures after his restoration to the English throne in May 1660 was the formal reinstatement of the theatres in England. Under Charles II, the rather drab years of Cromwellian Puritanism, that had meant the closure of all playhouses in 1642, were finally over. By royal warrant, granted on August 21, 1660, the stages witnessed an outburst of culture. In the following analysis, will shed some light on the development of the theatre and drama after 1660, with a particular emphasis on the continuity and changes the Restoration stage wrought as well as the influence of Neoclassicist thought on the drama.

Although Charles II saw the theatre as a “harmless divertissement”, the stage control remained firmly in the hands of the state. Various licensing acts reinforced censorship and state regulation and thus in a sense public opinion. Initially the royal warrant granted two noblemen the patent to erect two companies or troops of players and two playhouses. Similar to the Elizabethan tradition the theatres continued to be managed by playwrights or famous actor-managers who had acquired patents.  The royal monopoly continued, somewhat as Sir William Davenant (1606-68) and Thomas Killigrew (1612-83) were given royal patents to erect new playhouses, that not only reflected the recent tastes and fashions but were somewhat responsive to the recent past. Davenant who was rumoured to be the godson or even bastard son of Shakespeare himself could with such credentials boost his reputation as a playwright and librettist of court masques under Charles I. Killigrew on the other hand was not necessarily a theatreman, still by virtue of royal command and with the active patronage of Charles II  and his brother the Duke of York the Drury Lane (among otheres) opened. The process of establishing a new tradition brought about great changes where the audience, the actors, the architecture and the subject of the plays were concerned.

Even in 1642, when the theatres were shut down, the heydays of Elizabethan drama, with glorious figures like Marlow, Jonson and Shakespeare had long been over. Although there is evidence that, in spite of Cromwell’s puritan abolishment, drama and theatre were never completely dead and playwrights just went underground, forming a new subculture, the King’s Players and the Duke of York’s players had to practically reinvent theatrical tradition for a Restoration stage. Usually the Restoration repertoire was comprised of traditional material and new plays. Although tragedies were played on the Restoration stage, comedies were more fashionable and a more appropriate expression of the Zeitgeist and the hunger for life after 1660. The first premiere for the grand re-opening was a Shakespearean classic: Henry IV. And despite the zest for life, the rejection of moral solemnity and seriousness and need for light divertisment, Shakespeare, Jonson and Fletcher were part of the repertroire, sometimes with slight cosmetic improvements. The tragedies with their exotic extravagant settings, revenge plots, heroic honourable deeds of a grand scale, where good vs. evil and love and lust come into moral conflict, have not survived quite as well as the Restoration comedies about English philandrery. The comedy of manners (Elizabethan) was replaced by domestic tragedies, satirical farces, sentimental comedies or hybrid versions of all other genres. Furthermore, the stage was taken over by character types with telling names and without the satirical bite of Jonson’s comedies or Shakespeare's daker questioning undertones. Similar to the Satyr-plays of the Ancients the comedy sets out to reverse or debunk the heroics of contemporary tragedy. Sexual intrigue, cuckoldry, verbal fencing matches, bawdy humour were displayed in a stylish, aristocratic, urban London full of ingénues, rake-heroes and their equally quick witted female partners. Especially the early comedies had a court focus, usually spinning stories around famous rakes. Witty repartee, folk exuberance, political satire often manifesting in farce and sexual intrigue were only some of the important features of the early Restoration comedies, that served as aristocratic legitimization of power. As social comedies they dealt with cultural threats both explicit and implicit to the hegemonic ideology of the restored Stuarts and their court, thus the countrymen/ women were usually portrayed as uneducated bumpkins that were regularly outwitted. The prototypical Restoration comedy, however, began to change with the growing influence of the middle classes and the thematic focus shifts to accommodate the norms and values of an increasingly powerful bourgeoisie. The crucial change can be attributed to the Glorious Revolution in 1688, and the definitive end of absolute royal power. For playwrights like William Congreve whose most famous masterpiece The Way of the World was first staged in 1700, the focus lay no longer on the legitimacy of nobility. With the ascendancy of the middle class the aesthetic and moral outlook changed. From the form a jaded mere divertisment of the nobel elite the comedy evolved and began to reflect bourgeoise manners and morals. It flourished not only because of its accuracy but also because of its artificiality, the represenation high society and their manners on stage. Although it is not exactly a bourgeois comedy, Congreve already hints at a more middle class understanding of gender relations, power, sex and money. The hart-heartedness of the court wit, who was once seen as a revolutionary against moral seriousness, piety that is outwardly shown melted. While the handsome, intelligent Restoration rake had always been shadowed by a fop, a badly dressed caricature of the rake, the taste for moral lapses and aristocratic hedonism, embodied by both of these archetypes, was slowly replaced by the loving, sentimental hero of the middle class drama, foreshadowing in a way Jane Austen’s characters Mr Darcy and Mr Knightly.

While the Elizabethan drama was staged outdoors with natural lighting in huge arena-like buildings for up to 1200 people from all over the social spectrum, the Restoration revival also wrought great architectural changes. The Cromwellian shutdown and the Great Fire of London in 1666 destroyed most of the old playhouses, thus new venues needed to be found or converted such as the Lisle’s Tennis Court that became the Theatre in Lincoln’s inn Fields in 1661 or the Theatre Royal that was built in Drury Lane in 1674. These indoor theatres are no mere amphitheatres outside of city bounds, they were purpos-built, expensive and most of all covered. By royal decree the theatres moved into the city of London, providing easy access to courtiers and haute bourgeoisie. But with their limited capacity of maximum 800 spectators they cratered right from the beginning to a more elitist and exclusive audience who could afford the new ticket prices. Shakespeare’s public spectacle was turned into a courtly entertainment, where the poor groundlings were kept out, social divisions according to ticket prices – box, pit and gallery – became more prominent and the most expensive seats were closest to the stage. David Garrick late on introduced the picture frame stage with a darkened auditorium into English theatre practice. Theatre from then on was not only considered entertainment but art. Furthermore, the way of how plays were written and performed changed with the introduction of artificial (stage) lighting and stage props. The scripts did no longer need to be specifically worded (word-scenery) to trigger the audience’s imagination. The props, painted coulisses and backgrounds turned the drama into a visual spectacle. Especially when the king or his brother, the Duke of York, was in attendance, the spectacle on stage became secondary to the self-display of the audience. The theatre, as the vanity fair of social prestige, thus became a place to see and be seen. 

In the early days of the Restoration rehabilitation of the theatres women’s roles continued to be played by men like Edward “Ned” Kynaston (1640-1712) but this Shakespearean remnant was soon abolished, as the royal patronage extended towards women on stage giving rise to a new profession: the actress was born. While Kynaston may have being “the loveliest lady” (Samuel Pepys) on stage, he had to make way for women like Nell Gwyn (1650-1687), Anne Bricegirdle or Margaret Hughes who created popular roles as singers and dancers and some even became mistresses of the king. Though as a whole, the profession of the actress was regarded as little better than that of the prostitute, as evidenced in William Hogarth's engraving "Strolling actress in a barn". But with the invention of beeches roles, women dressed as men, women seized the opportunity to criticize the hypertrophic restoration masculinity of the rake-ideal, presenting a parody of men and their behaviour. The theatre, thus, provided a space for women to resist restoration culture, where she was released from convention, where she was allowed to voice criticism.