Drama, Theatre, and Identity in the American New Republic

Description

Drama, Theatre, and Identity in the American New Republic investigates the way in which theatre both reflects and shapes the question of identity in post-revolutionary American culture. In this 2005 book Richards examines a variety of phenomena connected to the stage, including closet Revolutionary political plays, British drama on American boards, American-authored stage plays, and poetry and fiction by early Republican writers. American theatre is viewed by Richards as a transatlantic hybrid in which British theatrical traditions in writing and acting provide material and templates by which Americans see and express themselves and their relationship to others. Through intensive analyses of plays both inside and outside of the early American 'canon', this book confronts matters of political, ethnic and cultural identity by moving from play text to theatrical context and from historical event to audience demography.

Jeffrey H. Richards is the author of Theater Enough: American Culture and the Metaphor of the World Stage, 1607-1789 (1991), and Mercy Otis Warren (1995), and has edited three other books. He has published articles in Early American Literature, William and Mary Quarterly, and other journals and collections. He has taught at the University of North Carolina, Duke University, and is currently Professor of English at Old Dominion University.

"...a useful and insightful work for the Revolutionary period and the first formative decades of the nation...the work is well-researched and clearly written, occasionally amusing, and always honest in its style and assumptions." Odai Johnson, Virgina Magazine