Empire on the English Stage 1660–1714

Contesting the current consensus that Restoration and early eighteenth-century drama referred almost exclusively to domestic social and political issues, Empire on the English Stage 1660–1714 shows that the theatre was a crucial location for debates over England’s contemporaneous colonial expansion. The book provides a comprehensive account of colonialism, national identity and the representation of race and ethnicity on stage. Joining current historical discussions of the development of British imperial ideology, Bridget Orr argues that dramatic texts and production provide a rich and unexamined archive in which the issues attendant on the emergence of the first empire figure largely. Her account not only sheds new light on plays by Dryden, Orrery, Behn, Wycherley, and Southerne but redirects attention to popular but now marginal texts by Settle, Sedley, Dennis and Charles Shadwell. Attention to the imperial themes of these dramatists decisively redraws the map of Restoration and early eighteenth-century drama.