Download or read book Victorian Actors and Actresses in Review written by Donald Mullin and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 1983-10-27 with total page 620 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An informative and scholarly survey by Donald Mullin, Victorian Actors and Actresses in Review, compiles extensive critical assessments by contemporary reviewers of some 250 British and American players who performed between 1837 and 1901. Backstage

Download or read book The Rise of the Victorian Actor written by Michael Baker and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-24 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1978. Between 1830 and 1890 the English theatre became recognisably modern. Standards of acting and presentation improved immeasurably, new playwrights emerged, theatres became more comfortable and more intimate and playgoing became a national pastime with all classes. The actor’s status rose accordingly. In 1830 he had been little better than a social outcast; by 1880 he had become a member of a skilled, relatively well-paid and respected profession which was attracting new recruits in unprecedented numbers. This is a social history of Victorian actors which seeks to show how wider social attitudes and developments affected the changing status of acting as a profession. Thus the stage’s relationship with the professional world and the other arts is dealt with and is followed by an assessment of the moral and religious background which played so decisive a part in contemporary attitudes to actors. The position of actresses in particular is given special consideration. Many non-theatrical sources are used here and there is a survey of salaries and working conditions in the theatre to show how the rising social status of the actor was matched by changes in his theatrical standing. A novel area of study is covered in tracing the changing social composition of the acting profession over the period and in exploring the case-histories of three generations of performers.

Download or read book Actresses as Working Women written by Tracy C. Davis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-03-11 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Victorian touring actresses written by Janice Norwood and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-09 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Rise of the Victorian Actor written by Michael Baker and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-24 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1978. Between 1830 and 1890 the English theatre became recognisably modern. Standards of acting and presentation improved immeasurably, new playwrights emerged, theatres became more comfortable and more intimate and playgoing became a national pastime with all classes. The actor’s status rose accordingly. In 1830 he had been little better than a social outcast; by 1880 he had become a member of a skilled, relatively well-paid and respected profession which was attracting new recruits in unprecedented numbers. This is a social history of Victorian actors which seeks to show how wider social attitudes and developments affected the changing status of acting as a profession. Thus the stage’s relationship with the professional world and the other arts is dealt with and is followed by an assessment of the moral and religious background which played so decisive a part in contemporary attitudes to actors. The position of actresses in particular is given special consideration. Many non-theatrical sources are used here and there is a survey of salaries and working conditions in the theatre to show how the rising social status of the actor was matched by changes in his theatrical standing. A novel area of study is covered in tracing the changing social composition of the acting profession over the period and in exploring the case-histories of three generations of performers.

Download or read book Henry Irving and The Victorian Theatre written by Madeleine Bingham and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-16 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1978. Henry Irving achieved an astounding success in Britain and America as an actor; yet he lacked good looks, had spindly legs, and did not have a good voice. He said so himself. Today Irving is regarded as the archetype of the old-time actor, but in his own time he was regarded as a great theatrical innovator. Even Bernard Shaw, who attacked him pitilessly, even unto death, called him ‘modern’ when he first saw him act. Irving, the man, with his tenacious, obsessive talent, his human limitations and weaknesses, and his ephemeral glory is brought most sympathetically to life in this biography. It is written from contemporary sources, and from criticisms, lampoons, caricatures and gossip columns. If Irving reflected certain aspects of his age, this book underlines the Victorian ethic to which he appealed and the backcloths against which it was set – the extraordinary lavishness of the Lyceum productions and the incredible extravagance of social entertaining. Not the least absorbing aspect of this biography is the fascinating account of the long partnership between Irving and Ellen Terry, still in many respects an enigmatic one, but here portrayed with lively insight into character combined with understanding and deep knowledge of the social and theatrical context of the Victorian age.

Download or read book Some Victorian Women Good Bad and Indifferent written by Harry Furniss and published by . This book was released on 1923 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biografieën van o.a.: Wilde, Florence Marryat, Ouida, Kate Greenaway, Mrs. Humphry Ward, Mrs. Oliphant.

Download or read book Actresses on the Victorian Stage written by Gail Marshall and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-05-07 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Routledge Library Editions Victorian Theatre written by Various and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-04 with total page 1626 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reissuing works originally published between 1971 and 1981, this compact set offers an outstanding collection of scholarship devoted to 19th Century, Victorian, theatre. A small set of performance history and criticism, this set includes a biography of Henry Irving, a look at the rise of the status of a career as actor, and a consideration of the advent of dramatic criticism. These volumes present together a lively picture of the development of the contemporary theatre.

Download or read book Actresses as Working Women written by Tracy C. Davis and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using historical evidence and personal accounts, Davis examines the reality of conditions for òrdinary' actresses, their working environments, employment patterns, and the reasons why acting continued as a popular though insecure profession.

Download or read book Theatre in the Victorian Age written by Michael R. Booth and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1991-07-26 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive survey of the theatre practice and dramatic literature of the Victorian period.

Download or read book Players and Performances in the Victorian Theatre written by George Taylor and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Players and Performances in the Victorian Theatre written by George Taylor and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The English Stage written by Augustin Filon and published by . This book was released on 1897 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Henry Irving the Greatest Victorian Actor written by Madeleine Bingham (Baroness Clanmorris.) and published by New York : Stein and Day. This book was released on 1978 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Sir Henry Irving written by Jeffrey Richards and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2007-01-20 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sir Henry Irving was the greatest actor of the Victorian age and was thought of by Gladstone as his greatest contemporary. He transformed the theatre, in Britain and America, from a disreputable and marginal entertainment into a respected and uplifting art form. This work gives an account of Irving and his impact on the Victorian theatre and life.

Download or read book The Moonstone written by Wilkie Collins and published by Broadview Press. This book was released on 1999-03-09 with total page 722 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intrigue, investigations, thievery, drugs and murder all make an appearance in Collins’s classic who-done-it, The Moonstone. Published in serial form in 1868, it was inspired in part by a spectacular murder case widely reported in the early 1860s. Collins’s story revolves around a diamond stolen from a Hindu holy place. On her eighteenth birthday, Rachel Verinder receives the diamond, but by the following morning the stone has been stolen again. As the story unravels through multiple eyewitness accounts, the elderly Sergeant Cuff—with a face “sharp as a hatchet”—looks for the culprit. One of Collins’s best-loved novels, with an exciting plot moved along by deftly-drawn characters and elegant pacing, The Moonstone was also turned into a play by Collins; the play appears as an appendix to this edition.