Drama Games for Rehearsals by Jessica Swale

Author:Jessica Swale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Nick Hern Books

Skills

Analysis, Articulation, Characterisation

Restoration and Georgian Comedy

I adore Restoration comedy, and even more so enjoy many of the Georgian plays that followed: the work of Sheridan and his female contemporaries, like Hannah Cowley and Susannah Centlivre, whose work has been all but lost since then (and is ripe for revivals, ladies and gents). But I have to confess, whilst I love the form on the page, I often don’t enjoy it in the theatre. Restoration as a genre seems to have suffered from rather misguided teaching. Student productions are often played with so much falsity and melodrama, facing the front and aiming at caricatures rather than characters, that any subtlety and genuine connection is lost. And, unsurprisingly, if the texts are treated like bald pantomimes, it’s very difficult for an audience to engage or relate. However, the good news is they don’t have to be like that – and when they’re played with sensitivity to the period style and with truthfulness and simplicity, then they can be wonderful.

Restoration comedies exploded onto the scene when Charles II came galumphing on to the throne in 1660. Prior to that England had been subject to a very dull period where everything was beige: the Puritans banned all forms of fun, from theatre and public singing to Christmas celebrations. So, when Charles arrived from his sojourn on the Continent and kicked the Puritans to the seventeenth-century kerb, he brought with him all things loud, bright and sexy. He reopened the theatres, commanded comedies to be written, and, after seeing it first in Paris, allowed women on the stage for the first time.

The consequence of the cultural shift from no theatre to full-throttle entertainment was that many playwrights tried desperately hard to ‘entertain’. Plays were often all show and, quite literally, no trousers. With women in the companies, most of whom were prostitutes, writers held nothing back, making sure the men in the audience got their money’s worth from the theatrical spectacle. They wrote breeches parts for the women, in which women dressed as men, thereby revealing their shapely legs to the audience. Most plays of this type culminated in the ‘reveal scene’ in which the woman was exposed as a women through her breasts being bared or some other shocking act. And, as if that wasn’t enough, the men in the audience could pay an extra penny to watch the actresses change backstage.

This isn’t to suggest that the early Restoration comedies were all lewd. Many writers like Aphra Behn and William Wycherley were true comic writers. However, there was certainly a trend for vulgarity. Sexual puns and themes were running high and the theatre became the realm of titillation. Characters were broad and often, as they were ‘stock characters’ inspired by Commedia dell’Arte and other European trends, they became exaggerated two-dimensional versions of reality. There was also a noticeable lack of morality in some of the populist comedies; characters chasing each other and getting their own way in love and marriage, often at the expense of others.

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