page_title: Theatre of the United Kingdom
section_title: Romanticism: 1798–1836
hierarchical_section_title: Theatre of the United Kingdom / Romanticism: 1798–1836
caption_attribution_description: Theatre Royal Exeter playbill featuring Edmund Charles Kean in "Richard III"
context_page_description: Theatre of United Kingdom plays an important part in British culture, and the countries that constitute the UK have had a vibrant tradition of theatre since the Renaissance with roots going back to the Roman occupation.
context_section_description: Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron were the most important literary dramatists of their time (although Shelley's plays were not performed until later in the century). Shakespeare was enormously popular, and began to be performed with texts closer to the original, as the drastic rewriting of 17th and 18th century performing versions for the theatre (as opposed to his plays in book form, which were also widely read) was gradually removed over the first half of the century. 
  Melodramas, light comedies, operas, Shakespeare and classic English drama, pantomimes, translations of French farces and, from the 1860s, French operettas, continued to be popular, together with Victorian burlesque.
caption: A Theatre Royal, Exeter playbill from 1836,  featuring Charles Kean in a performance of Richard III
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