Performing Shakespeare in the age of empire

by Richard Foulkes

"During the nineteenth century the performance of Shakespeare's plays contributed significantly to the creation of a sense of British nationhood at home and the extension of her influence overseas, not only in her own empire but also in North America and Europe. This was achieved through the enterprise of the commercial theatre rather than state subsidy and institutions. Britain had no National Theatre, but Shakespeare's plays were performed up and down the land from the fashionable West End to the suburbs of the capital and the expanding industrial conurbations to the north. British actors also travelled the world to perform Shakespeare's plays, while foreign actors regarded success in London as the ultimate seal of approval. In this book Richard Foulkes explores the political and social uses of Shakespeare through the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, and the movement from the business of Shakespeare as an enterprise to that of enshrinement as a cultural icon." "With the pro