During the 1820s and 30s nautical melodramas "reigned supreme" on
London stages, entertaining the mariners and maritime workers who
comprised a large part of the audience for small theatres. These
plays mixed sentimental moments and comic interludes of domestic
melodrama with patriotic images that communicated and reinforced
imperial themes. However, generally the study of British theatre
history moves from medieval and renaissance plays directly to the
realism and naturalism of late Victorian and modern drama. Readers
typically encounter a gap between Restoration and
eighteenth-century plays like those of Oliver Goldsmith and Richard
Brinsley Sheridan, and late-nineteenth plays by Henrik Ibsen and
Oscar Wilde. Nineteenth-century drama, with the possible exception
of plays by Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth, remains all but
invisible. Until recently, melodramatic plays written and performed
during this "gap" received little scholarly attention, but their
value as reflections of Britain's promulgation of imperial ideology
- and its role in constructing and maintaining class, gender, and
racial identities - have given discussions of melodrama force and
momentum. The plays included in these three volumes have never
appeared in a critical anthology and most have not been republished
since their original nineteenth-century editions. Each play is
transcribed from original documents and includes an author
biography, a headnote about the play itself, full annotations with
brief definitions of unfamiliar vocabulary, and explanatory notes.
Comprehensive editorial apparatus details the nineteenth-century
imperial, naval, political, and social history relevant to the
plays' nautical themes, as well as discussing nineteenth-century
theatre history, melodrama generally, and the nautical melodrama in
particular. Contemporary theatre practices - acting, audiences,
staging, lighting, special effects - are also examined. An
extensive bibliography of primary and secondary texts; a complete
index; and contemporary images of the actors, theatres, stage sets,
playbills, costumes, and locales have been compiled to aid study
further.
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