|
|
This is a limited free preview of this book. Please buy full access.
It complements The Theatre of Aphra Behn by Derek Hughes. Hughes considers some aspects of three-dimensional theatre, but his discussion is mainly a philosophically and linguistically based theoretical and literary analysis of the texts. His essay in The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn takes a similar path.
It also complements to a certain extent Treading the Bawds: Actresses and Playwrights on the Late-Stuart Stage, by Gillian Bush-Bailey, in which Bush-Bailey discusses the contemporary attitudes to Behn and the actresses.
Some passages in the book have been taken with permission, which is acknowledged with grateful thanks, from my essay ‘More for Seeing than Hearing: Behn and the Use of Theatre’, previously published in Aphra Behn Studies, which was edited by Janet Todd. Others have appeared in an article in the online journal Participations (http://www.participations.org).
Certain chapters draw on my unpublished doctoral thesis Aphra Behn on the Restoration Stage (1987), revised, updated, and extended where necessary.
Arguments draw on analysis of the stage directions of all plays first presented, and showing the use of the scenic stage, from 1661 to 1694, in Dawn Lewcock’s ‘Computer Analysis of Restoration Staging 1; 1661–1672’; Dawn Lewcock’s ‘Computer Analysis of Restoration Staging 2; 1671–1682’; and Dawn Lewcock’s ‘Computer Analysis of Restoration Staging 3; 1682–1694’.
References to Behn’s plays and other works are given from the The Works of Aphra Behn, in seven volumes, edited by Janet Todd, for ease of reference. Texts and stage directions have been checked with the first editions, and the works of other dramatists are usually from the first editions, unless otherwise noted. Behn’s spelling and grammar are erratic but have been retained unless the meaning is unclear, and quotations are as near the original spelling and punctuation as possible, although italicisation has been ignored and the long s, i/j, and u/v modernised.