Studies are in the midst of an invigorating transfor mation. Long hostile to the theoretically inflected, politically engaged methodologies associated with Performance Studies, the field now boasts ground breaking scholarship that combines a thorough knowledge of historical sources (a quality that has long typified work on this period) with the ex panded definition of performance and critical so phistication characteristic of the most exciting con temporary writing about theatre. Such signal texts as Paula Backscheider's Spectacular Politics, Joseph Roach's Cities of the Dead, and the exemplary Cam bridge Companion to Restoration Theatre edited by Deborah Payne Fisk amply testify to the rejuvena tion of research on London theatre during the long eighteenth century. The three impressive books reviewed here all display the energetic intelligence and ideological nuance currently reconfiguring knowledge of this era. Odai Johnson, Betsy Bolton, and Mita Choudhury employ methods drawn from