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Anglicanus , 1708, p. 9). Edward Ravenscroft then provided a version of the tragedy that superseded Shakespeare’s script (which apparently did not reappear on the professional stage until 1923). This version was probably first acted in the fall of 1678, revived in the mid-1680s, and published in 1687. Performed intermittently in the early years of the eighteenth century, Ravenscroft’s Titus in 1717 became a major vehicle for James Quin, the first of many actors (e.g., Ira Aldridge, George Hayes, Anthony Quayle
To look at the performance history of Titus Andronicus is to confront some provocative questions such as why has this play posed severe problems for generations of readers, critics, editors, actors, directors, and playgoers. The book examines twelve major theatrical productions and one film, on the play, that appeared in the years 1989-2009. It begins with Edward Ravenscroft's version that superseded Shakespeare's script. Peter Brook chose to stylise or formalise many moments, and Deborah Warner's production worked with no cutting of the script. Every staging of Titus elicits comments about the daunting nature of the script. The book presents Irving Wardle's reactions on Trevor Nunn's 1972 rendition, and Stanley Wells's review of the Swan production. The densest concentration of such problems and anomalies, as perceived by today's directors, critics, and editors, comes in the final scene. The productions that opened in 1989, directed by Jeannette Lambermont, Daniel Mesguich, and Michael Maggio, cut and rearranged the text liberally, often in an attempt to avoid the laughter. During the period 1989-99, three major European directors, Peter Stein, Silviu Purcarete, and Gregory Doran, focused their attention on the ways in which the play can be made to comment on specific contemporary affairs. Julie Taymor's venture in 1994 combined stylization with the 'visceral reality' as a means to keep spectators off balance and continuously sensitive to the shocking brutality of the play's events. The book ends by discussing the efforts of Yukio Ninagaw, Bill Alexander, Gale Edwards, Richard Rose, and Lucy Bailey.
-Hater Match’d (London, 1692), p. 52; Thomas D’Urfey, Don Quixote, Part III (London, 1696), p. 18; Thomas Otway, The Atheist (London, 1684), p. 3; Edward Ravenscroft, The Canterbury Guests (London, 1695), p. 14. 16 Ravenscroft, The Canterbury Guests , p. 9; John Gay, Three Hours after Marriage (London, 1717), p. 26; Thomas Baker, An Act at Oxford (London, 1704), p. 54; D’Urfey, The Marriage-Hater Match’d , pp. 3, 32. 17
matrix of early modern theatre there was in fact something peculiarly apposite about David Garrick’s presentation of Romeo and Juliet on alternate nights with Edward Ravenscroft’s grotesque farce The Anatomist : It was the macabre presence on stage of a corpse that comes to life and
delivery of) lines affected the nuances of the piece. The politics of Restoration drama are therefore fragmented, but the interplay between past and present on the Restoration stage is also of note. In the commendatory poems to Edward Howard’s unsuccessful play The Six Day’s Adventure or the New Utopia, Aphra Behn and Edward Ravenscroft favourably compared Howard’s work to Jonson’s and Samuel Clyat envisioned a time when Howard would supplant Beaumont and Fletcher. Other writers were less complimentary and accused Howard of borrowing too heavily from James Shirley. What
of extreme animosity towards Catholics – behaviour that could itself be described in precisely these terms. In fact, the persecution of those supposedly involved in the Popish Plot was described as cruel and irrational, not least by playwrights on the other side of the emerging political divide. As Owen points out, in the epilogue to Whitaker’s play The Conspiracy (1680), written by Edward Ravenscroft, ‘those who gloat over the Popish Plot executions are accused of barbarism’.46 At first, opposition to the persecution of Popish plotters was tentative. While
pewter-pot belonging to the Chamber; My lovely Mistris I espi’d as she a milking went a, But oh me thought at every stride her smock that she had rent a; Full pale she look’d, for on her head a milk paile was well placed, Her lips were white, her brows were red, her body was straite-laced.92 As the London theatre was being revitalised during the Restoration, an Edward Ravenscroft comedy, actually derived in part from a late sixteenth-century 89 For Jacobethan drama’s reliance upon and testing of sumptuary expectations, see R. I. Lublin, Costuming the Shakespearean