Time in Romantic Theatre

“Along with providing an encyclopedic examination of early nineteenth-century performances, dramaturgy, and theatrical techniques and apparatuses, Time in Romantic Theatre recovers and celebrates forgotten dramatists, plays, and dramatic subgenres. Future scholarship will benefit from and build on Frederick Burwick’s insights and discoveries.”

William D. Brewer, Professor of English, Appalachian State University

“Time in Romantic Theatre adds significantly to our knowledge about nineteenth-century theatre and performance. It reveals how Romantic drama represents time in creative ways by using flashbacks and flashforwards, compression and extension, memory and anticipation, and alternative temporalities. Enjoyable as well as instructive to read, this book is full of fascinating insights into the interactions of playwrights, actors, managers, set designers, reviewers, and audiences in the world of Romantic theatre. There is no one better qualifiedthan Frederick Burwick to bring this world to life for modern readers.”

Angela Esterhammer, Professor of English, University of Toronto

 The shift in temporal modalities of Romantic Theatre was the consequence of internal as well as external developments: internally, the playwright was liberated from the old imperative of “Unity of Time” and the expectation that the events of the play must not exceed the hours of a single day; externally, the new social and cultural conformance to the time-keeping schedules of labour and business that had become more urgent with the industrial revolution. In reviewing the theatre of the Romantic era, this monograph draws attention to the ways in which theatre reflected the pervasive impact of increased temporal urgency in social and cultural behaviour. The contribution this book makes to the study of drama in the early nineteenth century is a renewed emphasis on time as a prominent element in Romantic dramaturgy, anda reappraisal of the extensive experimentation on how time functioned.

Frederick Burwick, Emeritus Professor at UCLA, is author and editor of thirty-four books and one hundred sixty-five articles. He has worked extensively on Romantic drama and Anglo-German literary relations. He is the general editor of the three-volume Encyclopedia of Romantic Literature (2012) and editor of The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2009). Recent monographs include A History of Romantic Literature (2019), British Drama of the Industrial Revolution (2015) and Playing to the Crowd, London Popular Theatre, 1780-1830 (2011).