This collection of essays marks the distance travelled in the last two decades in scholarship on nineteenth-century theatre. Thirteen essays, collectively and individually, weave history and historiography together in what are uniformly exemplary demonstrations of ‘new theatre history’. The volume also reminds us that it is in this formerly most maligned of theatre-historic fields that some of the most interesting, innovative and critically engaged work is being done.

The editors draw our attention to this in ‘sketching two major shifts in the historiography’ of the period, identifying the significance of earlier work to establish the ‘scholarly credibility’ of nineteenth-century theatre studies, and then its ‘robust engagement’ with contemporary critical theory (p. 3). The necessity of establishing such a scholarly credibility seems only just to be redundant, and the thought that nineteenth-century theatre studies lacked credibility only just risible. But I wonder if that long abjection is precisely the reason for the close engagement with critical theory that the best of contemporary nineteenth-century theatre historiography demonstrates? This collection is rich and various, with barely a false note. Several themes resonate through the material offered and link the different approaches. Throughout, the contributions examine with precision and insight the cultural, political, legislative and experiential terms in which audiences and citizens in the nineteenth century understood ‘theatre’ and what constituted performance. Richard Schoch and Jacky Bratton consider the gulfs between legislative and popular definitions of theatre, while Gilli Bush-Bailey and Tom Postlewait drill down into the practices and repertoire of individual entrepreneurs to further our understanding of the social functions of performance in Britain.

Tracy Davis offers a historian's view via anthropology of the cultural work of fairies and fairyland. Other essays (those by Jim Davis, Mark Phelan and Emily Allen are good examples) take up a central theme of new historicism by working through the notion of British and Irish culture as performance, while remaining securely anchored in the material practices of specific performances. Of particular value are essays by Heidi Holder, Jane Moody and Jeffrey Cox, which examine the centrality of melodrama to the recuperative studies of nineteenth-century theatre ever since the work of Michael Booth and Peter Brooks, offering not only new material, but also new interpretations. Also, Edward Ziter and Catherine Burroughs connect dramaturgic and cultural theory in their discussions of the overlooked genres of ‘low comedy’ (Ziter's thoughts on the ‘low’ in that term are particularly productive) and closet drama. The tools of critical theory deployed in these essays are powerful ones, and offer much food for theatre historians’ thought beyond the particular concerns.