RESTORATION ERA

1. ENGLISH RESTORATION THEATRE
1660-1700

2. Presented by
YASMEEN SAYAD

3. Historical Background
 Charles I was removed from throne and
beheaded by Oliver Cromwell and the
Puritans in 1649 after a 7 year civil war.
• Cromwell died in 1658 and his son could
not control government.
• In 1660, Charles II, who had been living in
France, was invited by a newly elected
Parliament to return from exile and rule
England.
• Monarchy was restored and the new period
was called the Restoration.

4. Conti…
 Puritans closed theatres in 1642.
 Playhouses were dismantled.
 Actors were persecuted.
 The Restoration of Charles II brought
revolution in English literature.
 When Charles II died, his brother James II
(Roman Catholic) became King.

5. Conti…
 Fearing Catholic rule, his daughter Mary and
her husband, William of Orange, attacked
England and forced James to flee. Parliament
invitedWilliam and Mary to assume the
throne. There was no blood shed (known as
The Bloodless Revolution).

6. Restoration Comedy
 Restoration comedy is the name given to
English comedies written and performed in
the Restoration period from 1660 to 1700.
After public stage performances had been
banned for 18 years by the Puritan regime,
the re-opening of the theatres in 1660
signaled a rebirth of English drama.
 Comedy of Manners: reveal the foibles of the
society that watched them. Society enjoyed
laughing at itself.

7. Restoration Comedy:
 Restoration theater featured witty and often
acerbic comedies about social manners, a
contrast to the great dramatic themes of
Shakespeare’s era.
 Restoration Comedies were less interested in
reforming society than in capitalizing on its
faults.
 Restoration comedy was strongly influenced
by the introduction of the first professional
actresses. Before the closing of the theatres,
all female roles had been played by boys.

8. Comedies of Manners
 Focuses on the fashions and foibles of the
upper class.
 Poke fun at the social conventions and norms
of the time and satirize the preoccupation of
the upper class.
 Characters are stock types – their names
usually describe their distinctive personality
traits.

9. Theatre Architecture:
 All theatres were now indoor proscenium-
arch buildings.
• Audience areas divided into pit with
backless benches and raked from back to
front, boxes, and galleries.
 Stage divided into two distinct halves
 TheApron – the forestage in front of the
proscenium – major area for
performance
 Backstage housed the scenery
 Entire stage was raked

10. Restoration Theatre.

11.  Proscenium doors
 Used for entrances and exits.
 Scene changes happened while audience
watched
 Costumes followed traditions of English
Renaissance
 Contemporary clothing was standard
 Traditional costumes and accessories
worn to indicate historical figures or eras

12.  Lighting was difficult
 Performances took place in the afternoon
to use natural lighting
 Candles and chandeliers were used to light
as well
 Used footlights – lights on the floor running
along the front of the stage.
 Restoration plays thus still did not aim at
creating a sense of realism but they
presented an idealised, highly stylised
image of scenery, characters, language and
subject matter.

13. The Audience
 Audiences were quite spirited in their
behavior during performances
 Spoke back to the actors, arranged assignations
with each other and attended the theatre to be
seen rather than to see the play
 Primarily audiences of the upper class – the
same group being satirized in the plays
 Playwrights tailor their works specifically for the
audience they know will be watching.

14. Playhouses:
 Two playhouses given official sanction:
 Drury LaneTheater
 Lincoln’s Inn Fields
 From these two names comes the term,
legitimate theater, which refers to
professional stage plays.

15. Machine Play- (Restoration
period)
 Machinery allowing for sunrises and sunsets,
flights and descents from heaven, rocks that
opened and fountains that played, became
increasingly important, achieving its apotheosis
in the operas.
The term ‘machine play’ is given to a variety of
works (tragedy, pastoral, etc.) in which the
spectacular element predominates, usually with
a strong admixture of music and dance.

16. Costumes:
 Clothing in the Restoration expressed the suppressed
feelings of freedom during the Puritan period.
 Masculine and feminine dress began to take on the stiffness
and smart elegance.
 Gentlemen wore wigs that had curls all over it and they
shaved their heads.The faces were shaved at first then only
a thread of a mustache if any.The hat moved to a high-
crown, stiffer and a little narrower-brimmed hat and it was
cocked to side. All men tried to wear cravats around the
neck rather than the huge collars.
 Women wore ringlets clustered in the back of the hair with
smaller tendrils waved around the face which replaced the
earlier dense frizzle. Rich women would weave pearls into
their hair and put nosegays in their buns, however, the
common people wore simpler hair.

18. Acting Companies
 Actors were hired on a contract system and not a
sharing plan
 Marked a decline of actors’ control over theatre in
London
 Actors were provided with yearly “benefits”
where one actor would keep all the profits of a
performance
 Actors learned their craft through apprenticeships
 Rehearsals lasted less than 2 weeks
 Acting styles featured broad gestures and powerful
declamatory delivery
 Actors fell back on conventional patterns of stage
movement

19. Female Writers
 A group of women writers known asThe
FemaleWits produced many works for the
stage.They included
 Mary Pix,
 CatherineTrotter &
 Susannah Centlivre who wrote 19 plays

20. Playwrights of the
Restoration
 William Congreve (1670-1729) – TheWay of
theWorld (1700)
 William Wycherly (1640-1715) – The Country
Wife (1675)
 George Etheridge (c. 1637-1691) – She
Would If She Could (1668)