‘All the world’s a stage, and all men and women merely players’. This famous phrase from Shakespeare’s As You Like It aptly encapsulates what this collection of nine eloquently written and lavishly illustrated essays seeks to convey – that we are all players and participants in the performance of our history. Staging historical events, as this book explores, is fundamentally a social performance of identities, since individuals and the cultures they occupy are mutually constitutive. Seen from a performative angle, and according to Tracy Davis, ‘as we negotiate life as social beings …, we perform. As we perform, we are also historical’.Footnote ¹ The material of the book is drawn largely from the Bodleian Library’s recent exhibition with the same title, Staging History, which took place between 14 October 2016 and 8 January 2017, and this accompanying publication is intended as a complement to the exhibition.

Many studies, including this one, concur that the theatre was an important social space for the promotion and consumption of historical drama in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Footnote ² In the book’s introduction, Michael Burden articulates the tension between historical realism and theatrical imagination which characterized staged historical re-enactments during this period. The predilection for historical realism, such as accurate topographical depictions or authentic costumes on stage, was underpinned by various social-cultural changes. For example, the expansion of print cultures and the falling costs of illustration meant that the public was acutely visually literate in the perceived accuracy of foreign lands or domestic locations, and consequently audiences’ expectations had to be met by the veracity of scenographic details (p. 10). Given the ephemerality of performance, moreover, visual culture served another crucial function: the preservation of the ostensible veracity of theatrical stagings for posterity. The book contains an impressive number of colour plates (73 in total), making it a visually enticing compendium. The essays rely heavily on surviving visual representations, such as oil paintings, playbills and other illustrations, as documentary evidence of staging practices (see for example, Chapter 1, paintings of the Kemble actors performing Shakespeare, pp. 32–3; Chapter 2, illustration depicting the use of real water on stage at Sadler’s Wells theatre, pp. 55–6; Chapter 7, John Webber’s paintings as sources of ethnographic detail for re-enacting the Death of Captain Cook, pp. 147–52; Chapter 8, metamorphic pictures of the melodrama The Exile as performed at the Royal Theatres, pp. 164–5). A common refrain throughout the book, therefore, is the role of visual culture as a performative territory within which the social construction of identities and ostensible claims to historical truths on and off the stage can be interrogated.Footnote ³

Although theatrical verisimilitude was inevitably determined by what was possible on stage, or on the authors’ and actors’ interpretation of history, to what extent did the urge for historical realism leave room for the theatrical imagination to roam? Did audiences prize perceived veracity more than other aspects of performance? And how far did a play or opera, founded on historical realism, function as a free-standing entity capable of creating its own dramatic space? By posing these critical questions (p. 18), Burden effectively sets the scene for the ensuing chapters, but also contextualises the book within current debates about adaptations of operatic works and historical dramas. The nine case studies are loosely organized into three themed parts: Part One, Among Facts and Fictions, interrogates more explicitly, although not exclusively, the tension described in Burden’s introduction; Part Two, Politics, Nation, Identity, explores how staged historical drama was entangled in the construction of political and national identities; and Part Three, Exploration, Exoticism, Empire, casts historical realism against the ever increasing fascination with exotic themes.

In Chapter 1, Ellen Lockhart discusses how the revival of Shakespeare’s plays during the late Georgian and Regency eras was underpinned by a sense of antiquarianism that not only aspired to the preservation of the more distant past but was also ‘fused with an anxiety about preserving the present’ (pp. 26–8). Lockhart focuses on examples concerning the preservation of the actor’s art of declamation and the authenticity of stage costumes. The account of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s eulogy to commemorate the death of renowned Shakespearean actor David Garrick in 1779, serves to illustrate the former. Sheridan’s eulogy comprised verses intended to be recited as a monody, and emulated the ancient genre of the ode which was a kind of poetic sung speech (p. 26). Sheridan’s eulogy was most likely influenced by Joshua Steele’s treatise on declamation, Prosodia rationalis, which was published in the same year (p. 28). Of interest is that Steele’s treatise contained annotated examples for the correct delivery of Shakespearean monologues based on the nuances, breathing and vocal inflections of David Garrick, effectively immortalizing this particular actor’s voice. As it emerges, while ‘actors and other stage artists made new kinds of claim to historical permanence, various new claims were also made on their behalf’ (p. 26). The historical authenticity of Shakespearean costumes is illustrated by Lockhart in relation to the activities of the well-established Kemble family of actors, a group that dominated the Drury Lane stage after Garrick’s death. While the pursuit of historical realism transformed the theatre stage into a ‘history painting brought to life’ (p. 34), albeit metaphorically, some of these new historically accurate costumed dramas by the Kemble dynasty were in fact captured in contemporary large oil paintings (pp. 32–4). These visual artefacts, however, entangle our understanding in a more complex interpretative process since the paintings reflect ‘historically accurate performances’ through the merging of different genres: theatrical record, family portrait (the depiction of the Kemble family in these plays) and history painting (p. 34).

Chapter 3, Jonathan Hicks’s study of the 1832 commemorative spectacle by James Sheridan Knowles, The Vision of the Bard (in honour of the departed writer and poet Walter Scott), echoes closely the theme of Chapter 1 about preserving the present through re-imagining the distant past. Between these chapters, however, the setting shifts starkly to the historical re-enactment of impressive naval battles on various London stages. As David Stuart explores (Chapter 2), the military events surrounding the Siege of Gibraltar in the early 1780s provided a ripe topic for both historical engagement and theatrical entertainment. Frederick Pilon’s musical farce, The Siege of Gibraltar, which opened in London’s Covent Garden in 1780, offered a vibrant amalgamation of facts and fiction, pointing to a style of ‘ephemeral show’: a love story set against the backdrop of the siege but with various details of the plot circumventing historical accuracy (pp. 45–9). Popular re-imaginings of the siege continued into the nineteenth century in the form of spectacular aquadramas using real water in the theatres. Charles Dibdin’s Okeaneia, which was staged at Sadler’s Wells in 1804, required the entire area of the proscenium to be filled with nearly eight thousand cubic feet of water (p. 51). The objective of such water-based nautical stagings was popular entertainment rather than historical verisimilitude (p. 54). As Stuart concludes, while the Siege of Gibraltar offered a real historical script to which British audiences could relate, these staged spectacles served other functions in contemporary cultural memory. By portraying the success of British might, these shows could re-ignite a sense of faith and hope in the British military and naval forces, and ultimately in national identity. From this perspective, the chapter’s underlying theme resonates closely with the concerns of Part Two.

Part Two leans more heavily on operatic works and melodrama. In Chapter 4, David Kennerley contrasts two versions of the opera based on James Robinson Planché’s Hofer, The Tell of the Tyrol, with music from Rossini’s Guillaume Tell arranged by Henry Bishop (p. 80). The 1830 operatic version of Hofer at Drury Lane portrayed the Tyrolean uprising as a fervent patriotic endeavour. But the staging of the Tyrolean peasantry’s ambush against Bavarian soldiers resonated with unrests closer to home – the violent riots among disenchanted rural labourers in both England and Ireland – and potentially functioned as a critique of the legitimacy of the British governing classes. Another abridged version of Hofer was performed during the Bradford Chartist rally in November 1841 (pp. 92–7). In this context, Hofer’s patriotism offered a means of encouraging political awareness among the working classes, to whom Chartism sought to appeal and ignite republican revolutionary sentiments. The chapter convincingly illustrates opera’s enduring ability to function as a potent political instrument in Victorian culture, since these two versions of Hofer served the political demands of the British people well beyond indulging the diverting interests of the metropolitan upper classes and the ruling elite.

In Chapter 5, Victoria Aschheim explores the nationalist discourses in George Frederick Bristow’s opera, Rip Van Winkle, which premiered in New York in 1855. The opera was part of the endeavour to establish art music of a distinctive American identity. On the one hand the work was lauded for marking a new ‘epoch in the history of the Lyric Drama of America’, but on the other hand its allegedly authentic native American character was brought into question (p. 102). Aschheim highlights, for example, how the opera’s sparing allusion to the native figure of the Indian in Act II can be interpreted to ‘perpetuate the historical act of forgetting in the course of setting out national memory’ (p. 111). While the music of Act II reflects patriotic American fervour at its best, with hymn-like choruses and militaristic songs, the libretto diverges from the original story, pointing to the constructed nature of nationalism in the arts and the tendency to respond selectively to real historical materials (p. 114). This early specimen of American art music, with its once-huge theatrical appeal of battle sequences and military heroism, now stands as a near-forgotten work, poignantly reminding us that sites of national-cultural memory – what Pierre Nora designates the lieux de mémoire – are always in a state of flux and can become dormant just as easily as they are ignited by history’s trail.Footnote ⁴

James Steichen (Chapter 6) also deals with American history retold on the theatre stage. Using the 1858 melodrama by playwright Harry Watkins, The Pioneer Patriot, Steichen explores how its content reflected on the racial politics of nineteenth-century America. Set against the backdrop of the 1777 Saratoga Campaign, the play’s most prominent character is the negro slave Jocko, whose dutiful, yet charismatic, presence takes on a potent political meaning and stands as a stark reminder of the ‘suppressed voices of African-American people and the unresolved promises of the Revolution’ (p. 132).

Part Three opens with another contribution by Michael Burden, a reading of the pantomime ballet, The Death of Captain Cook which opened in London’s Covent Garden in 1789 (Chapter 7). The piece was adapted from a French four-act ballet pantomime by Jean François Arnould-Mussot. For contemporary metropolitan audiences the achievements of this naval hero embodied a fascination with ‘discovery and scientific exploration’ of exotic places (p. 143). Adding to the spectacle’s appeal was the imaginative amalgamation of facts and fiction in the production, and by exploring this tension Burden inevitably revisits the earlier theme of Part One. For example, although many stage props and costumes were adapted from John Webber’s original paintings, the official artist on Cook’s last voyage, their reproduction was not always done with an emphasis on ethnographic accuracy. Other real events were also re-interpreted in the show. As Burden explains, Cook’s final moments on stage were modelled on the death of Trojan hero, Hector, in Homer’s Iliad, potentially lending the representation of Cook’s death a sense of epic transcendence. Burden lucidly conveys the theatricality with which a sense of realism was harnessed from the well-known facts of the story to craft an appealing commemorative spectacle.

Similar concerns with authenticity are explored by Wendy Heller (Chapter 8) in relation to Frederick Reynold’s melodramatic opera, The Exile, with music by Joseph Mazzinghi, which was premiered in London in 1808. The plot rests on the rather curious conflation of a true story with an anachronistic historical event. It combines the remarkable moving tale of a young Russian girl, Praskova Lupolov, who walked from Siberia to Moscow petitioning Tsar Alexander for her father’s release from exile, with the 1742 coronation of the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna at the Moscow Cathedral (p. 158). As Heller explains, various themes contributed to the popularity of this melodrama in both Britain and America, most notably the girl’s extraordinary filial devoutness, the simple charm of the music, the exoticism of the desolate Siberian landscape, and the grandeur of the Empress’s coronation (pp. 159, 168–72). Yet, the longevity of the story of Praskova’s journey as a staple of theatrical history, relied on various different forms that mixed original context with contemporary re-imaginings of the facts.

In Susan Valladares’s contribution (Chapter 9), we return to theatrical stagings about intrepid explorers. Thomas Morton’s play, Columbus: Or, A World Discovered, which was premiered in Covent Garden in 1792, enjoyed immense popularity during its early performances. Cast against the exotic backdrop of Peru, with an opening Incan worship scene, and merging a sentimental love story with a comic subplot, the play’s historical realism diverged from the facts, most notably in that Columbus was never in Peru (pp. 183–6). As Valladares explores, Morton’s treatment of historical sources with commercial flexibility, resulting in a play that combined farce, comedy and musical drama instead of pure historical realism, seems to fit well with the habits and sensibilities of contemporary theatregoers. By further contextualizing the play, Valladares reads Morton’s American setting as the ‘appropriation of a historically and geographically distanced American “other” which resonated with Britain’s broader political and commercial concerns’ (p. 194).

The authors offer an impressive amount of detailed factual information in this collection, the main purpose of which is to comment on performance history from diverse perspectives beyond an idealistic canon of well-known works. The book also successfully illustrates how the flexibility of staged genres, which combined pantomime, dance, musical farce or melodrama, served the demands of popular culture, spectatorship and consumer choice. Despite their varied material, in their interrelated aims these chapters articulate a number of overarching themes, although it is clearly up to the reader to trace these and other possible thematic connections. First, we can contemplate the theatre as a social space where audiences were able to engage with their own histories during public performances. Second, the reader may reflect on the complex relationship between history as lived experience and history as imaginative reconstruction on stage. And closely related to this is the tension between the authenticity of facts and their re-interpretation. The historiographical and interpretative challenges facing scholars of the performing arts is a third reoccurring theme. The material traces of past performances can never recreate fully the experience of the live event. At best these documentary traces open up a space for engaging with the interpretation of performance history creatively. More importantly, as it emerges from this book, an awareness that staged performances and their material traces can narrativize the past only imperfectly, challenges any claims to historiographical permanence, and ultimately allows the legibility of culture to emerge through more fluid notions of textuality. When real-time visuality is relocated from the staged product to other artefacts (visual or written), scholarship about performance history is negotiated between the literary domain and the reader’s imagination.

The coverage of plays and operas is far from complete, and certain themes relating to the production and reception of historical stagings, such as the role of technology or the performing body, are rather under-represented. Although this book might be more profitably viewed as an opportunity for engaging with selected moments of theatre and operatic history during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, its varied material can be situated at the intersection of performance and theatre studies, opera scholarship, visual culture and historiography. The interdisciplinary scope, together with the accessible, yet erudite, style of presentation, undoubtedly make this book appealing to a wide readership of students, scholars and all those with a keen interest in the history of the performing arts.