Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre, 1660–1914 (review)

Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre is an impressively comprehensive and consummately researched volume that will appeal to classicists and theatre scholars alike. The book addresses what has been a hitherto noticeable lacuna with respect to concerted research into the reception of ancient drama down the centuries, and it provides a plethora of informative discussions about long-neglected adaptations and productions that are carefully contextualized in terms of social, political, and legislative history.

Although this highly detailed and well-illustrated book does not possess a clear and sustained conceptual or theoretical focus, it does provide the reader with an extensive survey, bolstered by detailed dramatic examples, of the way Greek tragedies have been adapted or rewritten for the British stage (predominantly London) between the Restoration and the beginning of the First World War. In this respect, the Introduction's allusions to theoretical debates about canon formation and the place of the classics in contemporary culture can only be judged as cursory. Nonetheless, the sheer volume of examples of actual plays placed within sociohistorical context presented in the main body of the book will provide researchers in this area with an invaluable resource for many years to come.

The chronologically designed compendium scrutinizes how ancient Greek tragedy was presented and received at different times during the stated period and clearly illustrates how dramatists revisited the ancient dramatic oeuvre for a variety of reasons—whether to articulate a specific and often partisan political viewpoint, or to take advantage of, for example, the costume possibilities, particularly following the introduction of actresses onto the British stage in the seventeenth century. The authors make compelling arguments regarding the fluctuating popularity of particular ancient tragedies for and in different periods of British history, whether that reception be shaped by, for example, social upheaval such as the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution, an increased interest in women and sexuality on the stage, or a topical turn to pacifism.

The first half of the volume focuses on treatments of the ancient tragedies from the years between the Restoration and the end of the eighteenth century. The first chapter in this section, for example, provides a fascinating insight into what the authors identify as the "English Oedipus" and the representation of the eponymous antihero during the constitutional crisis that followed the execution of Charles I and the resultant Republican rule. Dramatists, theatre managers, and audiences of the day were transfixed by the Oedipal myth. Due to its reflection of "recurrent political concerns and anxieties regarding the monarchy . . . Sophocles' ancient tragedy with its themes of incest, tyranny, and regicide lent itself most effectively to comment upon the turbulent political events of the last three decades of the seventeenth century" (7). Detailed case studies of adaptations, such as that by John Dryden and Nathanial Lee (1678) that was to enjoy unfaltering popularity for over a century, elucidate the commentary and reveal much not only about the views and opinions held by audiences of British theatres, but also about the power of these foundational canonical plays to tap into and engage cultural consciousness across the centuries. This continuously underlying if rather faintly articulated thesis about the potential of ancient drama for later theatrical experience is complemented by engrossing and often entertaining details about adaptations based on plays by Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus, such as the plaudits received by Thomas Betterton for his eighteenth-century Oedipus or how the mythical origins of the ancient tragedies encouraged a more experimentally liberated approach for visual splendor onstage.

A later chapter discusses the way Euripides' Iphigenia assumed numerous guises on the eighteenth-century stage, proving to be an enormously successful vehicle for the Whig dramatist John Dennis to articulate his own pronounced ideological beliefs. In Dennis's 1699 adaptation, the classic is imaginatively re-invoked to critique what is perceived to be the dangerously superstitious ritual of the Catholic Church by making clear and uncompromising parallels between "the papists" and the barbarous Scythians. Oftentimes, adaptations changed the...