Actresses on the Victorian Stage
Actresses on the Victorian Stage

Author: Gail Marshall

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1998-05-07

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9780521620161

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Gail Marshall argues that the professional and personal history of the Victorian actress was largely defined by her negotiation with the sculptural metaphor, and that this was authorized and determined by the Ovidian myth of Pygmalion and Galatea. Drawing on evidence of theatrical fictions, visual representations and popular culture's assimilation of the sculptural image, as well as theatrical productions, she examines some of the manifestations of the sculptural metaphor on the legitimate English stage, and its implications for the actress in the later nineteenth century. Within the legitimate theatre, the 'Galatea-aesthetic' positioned actresses as predominantly visual and sexual commodities whose opportunities for interpretative engagement with their plays were minimal. This dominant aesthetic was effectively challenged only at the end of the century, with the advent of the 'New' drama, and the emergence of a body of autobiographical writings by actresses.

Victorian touring actresses
Victorian touring actresses

Author: Janice Norwood

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2020-05-09

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 1526133342

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Victorian touring actresses brings new attention to women’s experience of working in nineteenth-century theatre by focusing on a diverse group of largely forgotten ‘mid-tier’ performers, rather than the usual celebrity figures. It examines how actresses responded to changing political, economic and social circumstances and how the women were themselves agents of change. Their histories reveal dynamic patterns of activity within the theatrical industry and expose its relationship to wider Victorian culture. With an innovative organisation mimicking the stages of an actress’s life and career, the volume draws on new archival research and plentiful illustrations to examine the challenges and opportunities facing the women as they toured both within the UK and further afield in North America and Australasia. It will appeal to students and researchers in theatre and performance history, Victorian studies, gender studies and transatlantic studies.

Actresses as Working Women
Actresses as Working Women

Author: Tracy C. Davis

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-03-11

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 1134934467

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Using historical evidence as well as personal accounts, Tracy C. Davis examines the reality of conditions for `ordinary' actresses, their working environments, employment patterns and the reasons why acting continued to be such a popular, though insecure, profession. Firmly grounded in Marxist and feminist theory she looks at representations of women on stage, and the meanings associated with and generated by them.

Victorian Women and the Theatre of Trance
Victorian Women and the Theatre of Trance

Author: Amy Lehman

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2014-01-10

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 0786454717

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Spiritualists in the nineteenth century spoke of the "Borderland," a shadowy threshold where the living communed with the dead, and where those in the material realm could receive comfort or advice from another world. The skilled performances of mostly female actors and performers made the "Borderland" a theatre, of sorts, in which dramas of revelation and recognition were produced in the forms of seances, trances, and spiritualist lectures. This book examines some of the most fascinating American and British actresses of the Victorian era, whose performances fairly mesmerized their audiences of amused skeptics and ardent believers. It also focuses on the transformative possibilities of the spiritualist theatre, revealing how the performances allowed Victorian women to speak, act, and create outside the boundaries of their restricted social and psychological roles.

The Victorian Actress in the Novel and on the Stage
The Victorian Actress in the Novel and on the Stage

Author: Renata Kobetts Miller

Publisher: EUP

Published: 2020-08-25

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781474439503

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This book analyses how Victorian novels and plays used the actress, a significant figure for the relationship between women and the public sphere, to define their own place within and among genres and in relation to audiences.

Theatre in the Victorian Age
Theatre in the Victorian Age

Author: Michael R. Booth

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1991-07-26

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9780521348379

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A comprehensive survey of the theatre practice and dramatic literature of the Victorian period.

Acting Naturally
Acting Naturally

Author: Lynn M. Voskuil

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 9780813922690

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Voskuil argues that Victorian Britons saw themselves as "authentically performative," a paradoxical belief that focused their sense of vocation as individuals, as a public, and as a nation.

The Orient on the Victorian Stage
The Orient on the Victorian Stage

Author: Edward Ziter

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2003-09-25

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780521818292

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This book explores the impact of the Middle East and the Orient on writing and performance in nineteenth-century British theatre.

W.S. Gilbert
W.S. Gilbert

Author: Jane W. Stedman

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 9780198161745

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Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911) was the most brilliant dramatist of Victorian England. A daring and cynical playwright, the forerunner of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, he was also a prolific journalist and humorous poet (his Bab Ballads are still widely read), and he achieved worldwide fame through his long collaboration with the composer Arthur Sullivan, a collaboration that created such classics as H. M. S. Pinafore, The Mikado, and all the other Savoy operas. Now the story of this remarkable writer's life - and of his stormy relationship with Sullivan - is here chronicled by a renowned authority on Gilbert and on the theatrical and literary scene in Victorian London. For this biography, Jane W. Stedman has returned to original sources, has interviewed survivors, and has scoured a whole variety of Victorian periodicals for reviews, and personal comment. Gilbert emerges as a much more complex and interesting figure than has previously been thought. The book is a worthy companion piece to Arthur Jacobs's recent biography Arthur Sullivan: A Victorian Musician.

How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain
How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain

Author: Leah Price

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2013-10-27

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 0691159548

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How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain asks how our culture came to frown on using books for any purpose other than reading. When did the coffee-table book become an object of scorn? Why did law courts forbid witnesses to kiss the Bible? What made Victorian cartoonists mock commuters who hid behind the newspaper, ladies who matched their books' binding to their dress, and servants who reduced newspapers to fish 'n' chips wrap? Shedding new light on novels by Thackeray, Dickens, the Brontës, Trollope, and Collins, as well as the urban sociology of Henry Mayhew, Leah Price also uncovers the lives and afterlives of anonymous religious tracts and household manuals. From knickknacks to wastepaper, books mattered to the Victorians in ways that cannot be explained by their printed content alone. And whether displayed, defaced, exchanged, or discarded, printed matter participated, and still participates, in a range of transactions that stretches far beyond reading. Supplementing close readings with a sensitive reconstruction of how Victorians thought and felt about books, Price offers a new model for integrating literary theory with cultural history. How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain reshapes our understanding of the interplay between words and objects in the nineteenth century and beyond.