The Broadview Anthology of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Drama, Second Edition

Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since the publication of Broadview’s first edition of the Anthology of Restoration and Early Eighteenth-Century Drama, and years of such extensive change justify a new edition. The need for an anthology of Restoration and eighteenth-century drama otherwise might be in question, given differences in institutional priorities and student requirements we now face. It is rare to teach a course dedicated to the subject these days. That aside, this is a remarkable revision to Douglas J. Canfield’s door stopper. It is a slimmer, sexier, more sociable volume that seems right for this era.The book in softcover is well-made and readable, with a two-column layout for the text. The two-page map of Major London Theatres is likewise legible (maps with place names so small you cannot read them are worthless). The inset of the Theatre District names five-major playhouses, and the whole contributes a sense of these plays happening in place and time. The four colorplates of theatrical performances include paintings by William Hogarth and Joseph Zoffany, a print from Miss in her Teens (1747), and a 1773 playbill for The West Indian (1771), particularly lovely and rich cultural documents. Like the original, this anthology serves as a reference for Restoration and eighteenth-century theatre, but it expands coverage through the turn of the nineteenth century. Cut down from the original anthology of forty-one plays, this edition includes twenty plays; it weighs about three pounds (396 g). It is portable but will occupy some real estate in a backpack.The selection of plays follows the logic of popularity. The publishers surveyed previous instructors on which plays they taught, and the editors used this to make hard decisions. They cut seven titles from the Concise volume, including John Dryden’s Marriage a la Mode (1671) and Henry Fielding’s The Author’s Farce (1730), but they take advantage of online offerings to retain student access to the plays. All seven edited versions are online. The publisher plans to add the remaining plays from the full first edition for students. Since there is online capacity, I recommend that the publisher include some theatre music. If there is anything lacking in this otherwise splendid work, it is attention to the music of theatre. Especially in the earlier plays, music was integral to plots and entertainment. Many plays have songs and “music,” or a stage band, involved. The London Merchant (1731) is based on a ballad, which the editors do include in full. Neither opera nor The Beggar’s Opera (1728) arrived in a packet from Italy. Music and theatre were tightly bound much earlier and indeed contributed much to a dramatic performance.The added texts in this edition help fill out a fuller chronology: The Rival Queens (1677) by Nathaniel Lee; The Provoked Wife (1697) by John Vanbrugh; the afterpiece A Miss in Her Teens by David Garrick; The West Indian by Richard Cumberland; and Such Things Are (1787) by Elizabeth Inchbald. All contribute to the cultural narratives visible in the earlier plays. The latter two raise issues of British colonialism and racial stereotypes. The editors of the added plays document their popularity. In fact, all the introductions are revised to include updated stage histories.Editors Diana Solomon and David Weston make a key sociable move in the narrative introduction. Instead of a scholarly examination of the political and generic contexts of 1660 to 1737, they use the fictional apparatus of a time traveler to immerse the reader in the role of playgoer in three historical moments: 1671, 1731, and 1780. It is a superlative pedagogical strategy that makes the history of theatre vivid and memorable. Many of the changes in this edition support teaching drama as a performance genre, starting with the straightforward historical organization of texts. Gone are the nine subgenres to memorize. The editors include all prologues and epilogues which generally speak to the moment of performance, audience members, and their tastes. They also supply the full dramatis personae which calls out the historical actors. Some of these people receive brief biographies in the list of “Actor and Actress Biographies” at the front of the book.One of the beauties of the introduction is that it introduces students to major themes such as class structure, which is built into the architecture of playhouses and enacted in the plays. The time traveler playgoer starts as an aristocrat gentleman who sends his servant to buy a ticket for a box seat, then becomes a linen-merchant’s wife who sends her servant to hold a seat in the lower gallery, and finally a milliner’s assistant who waits an hour to get her ticket for the first gallery. The critical categories of race and gender remain potential themes as well. Gender conversations are bolstered by the inclusion of four women writers in print (Aphra Behn, Susanna Centlivre, Hannah Cowley, and Inchbald) and three more online (Mary Pix, Mary Delariviere Manley, and Catharine Trotter), as well as the repeated themes of marriage, love, and commitment in all of the plays. The revised introductions thoughtfully provide pointers for critical discussion rather than argument.By cutting Dryden’s comedy from the print, Behn becomes the only author with two plays, the same two as in the first edition. Each now includes a critical paratext by Behn, the preface to The Lucky Chance (1686) and postscript for The Rover (1677). One could teach a tidy unit on Behn by adding the novel Oroonoko (1688) in conversation with Thomas Southerne’s 1695 adaptation of the same, and some of her songs featured in drama. The introduction to The Rover, however, should be supplemented with the latest biographical information on Behn (see essays by Karen Britland).1The anthology represents the work of many editors. Continuing the model of the first edition, each play has a separate editor, and sometimes more than one for the paratexts and introductions. The play text editors use primary editions and cite variants with other editions in textual notes at the end of each play. It is an enormous amount of work thoughtfully done.The Broadview Anthology of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Drama is an attractive option for teachers. The introduction alone makes me nostalgic for the days I might have taught such a book. Its main competition is The Routledge Anthology of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Drama, which shares nine plays and more authors and offers an extraordinary wealth of contextual materials, in print and online. They are similarly priced and sized, so the choice probably comes down to what plays you want to teach and how.

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