Theatre and Governance in Britain, 1500&#8211;1900
Subtitle: Democracy, Disorder and the State
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 290
ISBN-13: 9781107182158
Subjects: Theater, great britain, history; Theater, political aspects
Description: This book begins with a simple observation - that just as the theatre resurfaced during the late Renaissance, so too government as we understand it today also began to appear. Their mutually entwining history was to have a profound influence on the development of the modern British stage. This volume proposes a new reading of theatre's relation to the public sphere. Employing a series of historical case studies drawn from the London theatre, Tony Fisher shows why the stage was of such great concern to government by offering close readings of well-known religious, moral, political, economic and legal disputes over the role, purpose and function of the stage in the 'well-ordered society'. In framing these disputes in relation to what Michel Foucault called the emerging 'art of government', this book draws out - for the first time - a full genealogy of the governmental 'discourse on the theatre'.