Table of Contents

List of illustrations; Acknowledgments; 1. Introduction and approach; 2. The playhouse and the performance; 3. The actor; 4. The actress; 5. Stage and sexual tactics; 6. A mode of speech; 7. The spirit of the performance; Appendices; Selected bibliography; Index.

Reviews

Until recently, critics have dismissed Restoration comedy as superficial, predictable, even obscenea degenerate heir to Elizabethan drama, a crude ancestor of the modern ``well-made play.'' Styan finds this criticism based on the assumption that plays should read as literature. He insists that Restoration comedy is above all theater and therefore concentrates on its physical and social aspects: staging, costumes, and manners. By featuring these important elements of Restoration life, Stynan says, dramatists were able to achieve an interplay between drama and reality. Styan illustrates his material with quotes from plays, courtesy books, poetry, etc., making this work a lively, readable introduction to the era as well as the plays. James Stephenson, Gelman Lib., George Washington Univ., Washington, D.C.