Information on Restoration Drama

Elizabethan theater
James I was the patron of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. Jonson wrote humor comedies and
extravagant masques to be staged at the court.
In the Renaissance period, theaters did not have roofs. The players used natural light. They
performed on a mostly bare stage with very few props.
Adult men and boy actors
Upper-class audience sat in the boxes. Lower-class audience, called the groundlings, stood in
the pit.
For more information: http://www.theatrehistory.com/british/bellinger001.html

Theater was banned between 1642 and 1660.

In 1642, the Puritans in Parliament passed a law that suppressed the production of
plays. Puritans felt that the theatre was an ungodly place and that art could distract people
from the Church.
Reports of raids on theaters show that there were a lot of illegal productions.

Restoration theater
In 1660, three months after being restored to the throne, Charles II issued a grant to two
people to open theaters.
London theaters: William Davenant founded the King’s Company
Thomas Killgrew started Duke’s Company
Dublin had Theatre Royal

The theater companies were under the patronage of the court which allowed the king to censor
them. Aristocrats would donate their old clothes to be used as costumes.

For more information: http://www.theatrehistory.com/british/restoration_drama_001.html

The Restoration stage is a transitory stage between the Early Modern stage, which had fewer
props and sets and the 19th-century stage, which had spectacular stage effects. Charles II and
his courtiers brought new staging conventions from the Continent, like the proscenium stage
and moveable scenery.
There would be a backdrop, a painting of the setting. But the curtain was not closed between
scenes, so the audience could see the set changes.
Proscenium stage with backdrops allowed the players to represent scenes as well as creating
a perception of depth.

Theaters would seat 650 people. A few playhouses could seat up to 2000 audience members.
Tickets were expensive. Audience would sit in boxes, galleries, and the pit.
Small, roofed theaters, scenery, artificial lighting, The plays could be spectacular. There
would be changing scenery, orchestra, dancers, famous actors. In one play, an orchestra of 32
musicians descended onto the stage from the ceiling.
Each play would be staged for 4-5 days. 10 days in a row would make a play a smashing hit.
Restoration dramatists wrote small-scale drama, comedies about private life.

The audience consisted of nobility, merchants and their families, and minor bureaucrats.
People would go to the theater to socialize, gossip, flirt, and make connections. It would
provide a lively social scene and another occasion for the aristocrats and the wealthy

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bourgeoisie to interact. “Wits” and aspiring wits would sit at the pit and shout out witty
repartees to the actors.
Diaries of Samuel Pepys (1660-1669) are a great source of information about the period.
Samuel Pepys kept a detailed diary of his daily life, which is a great source of information
regarding the daily life of an intellectual living in Restoration London.
Royal Museums Greenwich website has a short piece on Pepys diary entries about theater and
actresses:
https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/blog/curatorial/samuel-pepys-first-actresses
This is a digital archive of Pepys diaries. In the “Encyclopedia” section, you can search for
specific topics like theatre, government, or fashion.
https://www.pepysdiary.com

Actors were individually known by the audience. They would be typecast. In 1690s an actor
named Colley Cibber, who always played villains, was cast as a good character. The audience
watched 2-3 acts assuming that his character was secretly plotting an evil plan, which would
be revealed at the end. They were surprised and indignant when they finally realized that they
had been watching a good character all along.

Charles II also gave permission to employ actresses. One reason was a shortage of boy actors.
Playwrights and directors also thought that the presence of women would lead to decorous
topics, decent and instructive entertainment.

A lot of Restoration plays have a cross-dressing scene for one of the female characters, which
was called “the breeches part.” Actresses would reverse the cross-dressing trope of the
Renaissance drama boy actors. There are cross-dressing scenes for female characters in many
Renaissance plays. This meant that a boy actor would be playing the role of a female
character, who disguises herself as a boy in the play. Example: Twelfth Night, Merchant of
Venice.
The “breeches parts” were a major novelty for the Restoration audience. Moreover, the pants
made it easier for the actresses to move and gave them an opportunity to show their legs.

There were also popular theater shows for the rest of the public, who could not afford tickets
for the playhouses: Farces, drolls, puppet theaters were staged at town fairs. There were
pageants and processions.

Types of plays in Restoration drama:

London audience did not want well-constructed comedies and tragedies that followed the
Three Unities (the play taking place in the same setting, in one day, with one main plot). They
preferred fast-faced, complicated, multi-plot plays with lots of witty lines.

Heroic drama- Often about a matter of honor. The plays focused on love, loyalty, and
submission to the monarch.
Heroic romance- sometimes set in exotic places or about exotic characters
Comedy of manners- These plays showed and satirized the manners and morals of different
types of people such as the nouveau riche, bigoted clergy, arrogant middle-class characters
etc. Characters would be neither aristocrats nor rogues. Often, they would be of landed gentry,
wealthy heiresses, rich merchants, and town gentlemen.
People with high social standing could be criticized with humor on stage.

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Old drama, such as Shakespeare and his contemporaries were also being staged. These
plays were not written for roofed playhouses or for the Augustan audiences. Sometimes,
scenes were embellished or rewritten to fit the tastes.

Rejection of puritan morality:

When the English Civil War began in 1642, the Puritan controlled parliament shut down the
theaters. There were many illegal productions staged in underground theaters in the brothel
districts and the outskirts of London.
When Charles II became king with the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, he opened the
theaters and gave charters to two people to open a playhouse.

++++++++++++++++++
Let’s refresh our memories about who the Puritans were. Puritans believed that the Church of
England still maintained many characteristics similar to the Roman Catholic Church, and they
demanded a greater form of purity of doctrinal worship. Highly anti-Catholic,
the Puritans believed that the Church of England required further reform. They opposed the
use of aesthetic objects and rituals in the organization of the Church and in rituals of worship.
Both the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church of England had a developed hierarchy of
clergy and both churches used decorated vestments, organ music in church services.
The Puritans were critical of art and aesthetics for two reasons. They followed Protestant
doctrine that faith should stem from the individual believers rather than evoked with rituals
and ceremonies. They were also suspicious of aesthetic pleasures’ potential to distract the
believers from a life of faith. They believed that hard work and success in business were
important signs of Salvation.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Rejection of the Puritan morality allowed the dramatists to play sexual scenes. The court also
encouraged sexual license, which Charles II had embraced in France.
Despite their apparent openness to depict sexuality and social criticism, the plays remained
conservative in their morals. In the plays, virgins would remain virgins, female characters
who pursued their sexual desires would be comedic characters.

One social intervention of the Restoration dramatists was to defend marriage for love as
opposed to arranged marriage or marriage of convenience. A lot of plays criticized marriages,
arranged by the parents for money or connection. They argued that marriage should be for
love.
Before this period marriage was a means for social, economic, and political connection
between families. It was general custom for the parents to choose spouses for their children.
In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church made consent of the parents a criterion of the
validity of a marriage. Marriage decision was seen as too important to be left to the children.
In the 18th century, young people became more independent from their families and started
marrying for love.

“Marriage for love” theme was a reflection of changes in the marriage practices in the 18th
century. 18th century is the emergence of companionate marriage. In a traditional
marriage, typically the husband is often the breadwinner while the wife is a stay-at-home
mother or a homemaker. In a companionate marriage, the spouses have mutual interests in
their careers and children. Partners can agree to not have children or can be divorced by
mutual consent. Divorce was not possible in England until 1852, but the theme of “marriage

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for love” prioritized the couple’s decisions regarding their relationship over the authority of
customs or families.

For a history of family and marriage in England, look at Lawrence Stone’s Book The Family,
Sex, and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 and Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall’s book
Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850.

Link to ebook The Modernization of Friendship and Marriage

http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?
docId=ft6z09p0z3&chunk.id=d0e489&toc.depth=100&brand=ucpress